If You're A Republican Looking For Climate Consistency, Your Only Choice Is Barbour - Here's Why!

[hatrack]

When news broke of Jon Huntsman's serious consideration of a run for president last month, several conservative pundits, including the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin, dismissed the former Utah governor's chances by pointing to his moderate record on global warming, which they predicted would play poorly among the GOP's conservative base.

Indeed, Huntsman was a vocal booster of the Western Climate Initiative, which promoted the possibility of a carbon cap-and-trade program. "Until we put a value on carbon, we are never going to be able to get serious about dealing with Climate Change long term," Huntsman said back in 2008. "Now putting a value on carbon either suggests you get a carbon tax or you get a cap-and-trade system underway." This is obviously a long way from the current GOP orthodoxy on climate change, which holds that any attempt to regulate carbon is, as House Speaker John Boehner puts it, "a job-killing national energy tax on struggling families and small business."

But Huntsman is far from the only 2012 GOP contender who will have to explain past support for confronting climate change on the campaign trail. In point of fact, carbon regulation was not so verboten in the GOP just a few years ago. Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and Newt Gingrich all have supported efforts to combat climate change. "I also support cap and trade of carbon emissions," Mike Huckabee declared in 2007, while campaigning in New Hampshire. In the same year, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin set up a "Climate Change Sub-Cabinet" to deal with the problem in her state. Of the major candidates now inching towards a run, only Haley Barbour can boast of a clean record of opposing carbon regulation, dating from Barbour's work as a lobbyist for heavily polluting energy companies.

So as a service to GOP voters preparing their early 2012 crib sheets, here is a quick-and-dirty look--in six parts, with video and links--of how this year's potential candidates have approached the carbon issue:

EDIT

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2011/03/24/on-global-warming-no-clear-skies-for-most-2012-gop-contenders/?xid=rss-topstories

[kenny blankenship]

1. I thought it was because he carries his own microclimate around him.

NASA reports that the troposphere of Haley Barbour is a constant 93F year round, which coupled with the humidity that pours off his ever glistening forehead and jowls makes for some of the most stifling and inhospitable conditions found in the solar system.

[hatrack]

2. No, I think that's the Doltosphere you're referring to - that miasma of overwhelming stupidity . . .

It renders the half-smart conservative voter slack-jawed, and reduces the slack-jawed to drooling idiocy suitable only for attending Republican National Conventions.