HOUSE SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH could have used his stint hosting Larry King Live on March 29 to preach free-market environmentalism. With a zookeeper, a Bengal tiger, an iguana, a wallaby, a mountain lion, and a cockatoo among his guests, he could have denounced failed government programs and laid out an alternative vision inspiring to those who share his conservative convictions and his passion for nature. But for most of the show, Gingrich was too entranced by the animals to make policy points. Only in the last minute of the hour-long program did he talk about the environment, putting in a plug for biodiversity and for keener awareness of man’s place in nature.
Gingrich’s reticence on Larry King typifies the GOP’s defensive posture on environmental issues. Having initially pursued an ambitious deregulatory agenda, congressional Republicans took a public relations beating and still are licking their wounds. They moan that environmental politics could plague them in November.
The concern is justified. While much environmental polling is unreliable (nobody claims to be “against” clean air), a January poll by Linda DiVall was a wake-up call for Republicans. She found that “55 percent of Republicans do not trust their party when it comes to protecting the environment, while 72 percent of the Democrats do trust their party.” More specifically, she found that cutting the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget — a GOP proposal — is a political loser. There are conflicting opinions on the implications of these findings, as “the environment” tends to rank low among the issues voters cite as most important. Still, no party can afford to be seen as pro- pollution.
This is especially true with the White House planning to make the environment a centerpiece of the presidential campaign. President Clinton regularly excoriates Republicans for their environmental agenda, and verdant Vice President A1 Gore can be trusted to lead a scare campaign. In connection with Earth Day on April 22, the Clinton administration is dispatching cabinet and sub-cabinet officials to showcase its record on environmental protection.
Because Bob Dole has little public profile on environmental issues, the Democrats’ offensive is expected to draw blood. Clinton will charge that as majority leader, Dole has pushed anti-environmental legislation. Dole’s inability to communicate a convincing free-market environmental position will help the charge stick. After an April 5 tour of the environmentally troubled Florida Everglades, Dole said vaguely, “We want to see things happen. Not more studies, not more regulation, not more personnel.” Then, as if to prove he was not, as he put it, “an extremist,” he called for federal involvement in the Everglades.
This is an area where Gingrich could provide leadership and clarify the GOP position. But the Larry King appearance suggested he’s not yet prepared to do this. A more fundamental problem is that Gingrich is out of step with most conservatives on environmental issues. (One of his environmental advisers, for example, is E. O. Wilson, a world-renowned professor at Harvard who has called for a moratorium on the development of undisturbed land.) He sees a greater need than they for a government role in environmental protection and has openly defied some proposals advanced by his conservative cohorts. Thus, he tried (unsuccessfully) to maintain funding for the National Biological Survey, an inventory of plants and animals despised by property- rights groups, and he led the effort that restored spending on wildlife conservation in Africa. In November, he said Republicans were “strategically out of position on the environment. . . . We approached it the wrong way, with the wrong language.”
The muddled messages coming from Dole and Gingrich do not inspire confidence. And having been spooked by last year’s experience, the party has adopted a modest environmental agenda for 1996: passage of Superfund reform and the Safe Drinking Water Act. These initiatives should be no-brainers, as President Clinton called for Superfund reform in his 1995 State of the Union address and the Senate passed the water legislation in November 99-0.
But the bipartisanship has begun to evaporate. Environmental groups have begun attacking the GOP for its approach to Superfund, and House Democrats such as Rep. Henry Waxman are retreating from the Safe Drinking Water Act as not strict enough. Republicans will shout “hypocrisy” with some success, but the green media and well-financed environmental groups will drown them out. The Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council have budgets of more than $ 20 million; such groups crushed congressional Republicans’ environmental agenda last year. By contrast, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which maintains the largest free-market environmental program of any think tank in the country, devotes only $ 1 million to environmental issues.
At best, the environmentalist indictment of Republicans could spur the GOP to close ranks. This would be a big step forward, as Republicans have suffered as much from infighting as from the opposition’s attacks. The first and most jarring display of disunity came in July, when moderate House Republicans voted down measures relaxing environmental enforcement. Since then, more and more House Republicans have peeled away to side with Democrats on a series of votes.
The chief dissident is Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, a moderate from upstate New York who says Republicans have “deservedly been verbally and publicly spanked” for their approach to the environment. Boehlert pens op-eds and gives speeches on this theme. And he is obstinate. In March, he refused to sign on to radically scaled back regulatory reform, forcing Republicans to drop the bill. Yet Boehlert, who boasts that he counts the speaker as an ally, was rewarded a few weeks later when Gingrich named him co-chairman of a task force on the environment.
This makes conservatives cringe, as does the fact that Boehlert’s views are prevailing among House Republicans. While Boehlert was one of only two Republicans to vote against last year’s regulatory reform bill, 191 voted for his recent amendment to the farm bill, adding over $ 2 billion for environmental protection. The shift is also evident in the rhetoric. Conservatives now talk more about minimizing political damage from environmental issues than about launching an ideological offensive against Democrats. They know how hard it will be for them to turn the public relations tide.
Jonathan Adler of the Competitive Enterprise Institute argues that environmental issues need not be an Achilles heel for Republicans. In the past, the GOP has successfully exploited anger over job-destroying regulations. But to repeat those successes, Dole and Gingrich must shift the terms of debate, from Republican opposition to environmental protection to Republican support for effective regulations that aren’t overly intrusive. A disgruntled House Republican aide explains, “If we’re going to try to compete with the Democrats on who is more sensitive to the environment, we’re going to lose every time.”
by Matthew Rees
