Green groups eyeing Republicans for climate support
“It puts a number of people on record and really gives the party a pretty safe way to take a position,” Eli Lehrer, president of the conservative R Street Institute and a promoter of a carbon tax, told the Washington Examiner. “It’s a complicated issue, and a lot of Republican senators are not under any real pressure from their own constituents to say anything.”
…Republican staff held a closed-door meeting with a pollster who tried to present them with strategies to promote their own solution to climate change, but the suggestions offered were straight from the Democratic playbook. Meanwhile, offices have invited conservative groups such as the R Street Institute and the Energy and Enterprise Initiative — led by former Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C. — to discuss free-market approaches to reducing emissions.
Lehrer, speaking of the 15 Republicans who voted for Hoeven’s amendment, said, “I don’t see a sea change here. But you are seeing some clarity that the Republican Party is taking some of these issues more seriously than they have in the past.”
