The Green Elephant comes to Texas

Green Elephants are making a visit to San Antonio this weekend. However, their not stopping for the circus, but instead they will be attending the Republicans for Environmental Protection’s very own leadership conference. Key speakers at the event include conservative commentator Rob Dreher, evangelical pastor Joel Hunter, Republican pollster Whit Ayres, and the co-author of Newt Gingrich’s new book A Contract with the Earth, Terry Maple.

The interest group REP is establishing their 10th chapter in the state of Texas tallying in at a total of about 200 members making it the second largest of their chapters after California. The group was created in 1996 and prides itself on past conservatives for conservation such as Theodore Roosevelt and Barry Goldwater. In my opinion, you can make a pretty strong argument that Theodore Roosevelt would have been considered a liberal by today’s ideology and Barry Goldwater was liberal on many social issues. Despite their early success, the group is still yet to get any Texas politicians to align themselves with the group.

So why pay any attention to this group? Well, as exhibited in the past, the Republicans have mastered the technique of creating powerful political machines and if the Democrats aren’t careful, they could see some potential swing votes taken away. In particular, many Christians have begun to move back to the center of the political spectrum partially due to concern of environmental issues related to global warming. If the REP can get some politicians on board, those torn between parties may believe they can vote for both their concern over social issues, and the environment in Republican candidates.

To me the group seems like a walking contradiction. Politically, protecting the environment has meant putting caps and regulations on business, and directing governmental funding towards environmental issues. Last time I checked, supporting regulation of business and increased governmental spending on anything other than defense and the military made you a liberal. So how do you protect the environment while remaining a conservative? Well maybe you can privatize environmental protection, leaving it up to the Boy Scouts to try and stop TXU from building 14 coal plants across Texas. Something makes me think the members of this group should be liberals, but they’ve been told that all liberals are baby killing adulterers for so long that they just can’t bring themselves to accept the awful truth. Don’t expect any Texas politicians to align themselves with a group or cause too often associated with Al Gore anytime soon.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA100307.02B.greenelephant.2ca3802.html

- Garrett