Is America in the course of a massive political realignment, or just a temporary blip that sees strange alliances being formed between bits of what used to be the Left and Right? It’s a big question on political junkies’ minds these days, and inquiring minds want to know.
One hint that we are in the midst of a massive political change that could endure past the next few years is the increasing ad hoc coalitions we’re seeing in some parts of the country between market-oriented, green interests and libertarian-ish, blue-state Tea Partier-type conservatives who place great emphasis on principles like defense of private property rights and opposition to subsidies benefiting big, entrenched industries — or regulation used by wealthier, established interests or people to maintain their status.
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Many of the best cases of this arise where the topic of benefits given to “big agriculture” is concerned. For example, where regulatory subsidies benefiting the ethanol industry are entailed, we see greens siding with classic, 2009 to 2010-era Tea-Partier types opposing the Renewable Fuel Standard. We saw Gov. Ron De Santis, R-Fla., a pretty stereotypical Tea Party politician, run against “big sugar,” leveling the same charges against them that environmentalists had been screaming blue murder about for years.
Other examples involve the solar industry. While no Tea Party-type voter is likely to support much, or any, government support for the purveyors of solar panels, in a number of states we’ve seen staunch conservatives side with environmentalists over issues like property owners using solar panels to generate electricity and then feed it back into the grid, something utilities often don’t like because it diminishes demand for electricity they generate. This has occurred in Arizona, where it was also argued that solar generation by individual households resulted in regressive cost-shifting, and Florida. Now, in a highly localized fight, the same trend may be playing out in Spotsylvania County, Va.
There, several private landowners want to sell their property so that “sPower,” the largest private developer of solar in the country, can construct what advocates say will be the largest solar project on the entire east coast, something they should perfectly well be allowed to do if one believes firmly in private property rights and landowners’ entitlement to exercise them with minimal encumbrance.
Of course, not everyone does. Some landowners in the area, which is very conservative, don’t like the project and want it stopped, rumor has it, because they think it will be “ugly” and therefore might cause property value declines: a common refrain from eminent domain abusers who try to forcibly acquire the “ugly” property and then allow it to be used by a private or government interest to build something better looking. They are leveraging green arguments, too, and it will be up to county supervisors to decide who has the best green case.
On spec, the opposing residents’ argument looks somewhat weak, or at least they look a little like Johnnies-come-lately where their supposed “green worries” are concerned. It’s not conservative in the general, traditional sense to oppose landowners doing what they want with their property just because it’s unattractive or even because it might have some environmental consequences — hey, even moving the position of your mailbox can have effects on water flow. The opposition here is unlikely to be long-term donors to the Sierra Club or Greenpeace. Even if they were, it would be a tad ironic if they were now moving to block an explicitly green energy project leveraging tree-hugging arguments where the land in question has already been being used for lumber production, and there are few trees to be hugged on the land in question.
There are conservatives on the pro-solar development side, too. Some are to be found within the group Conservatives for Clean Energy, others are quiet veterans of the Bob McDonnell administration and other prominent, conservative Virginia political operations. These are the people championing private property rights and green energy, and are perhaps the latest incarnation of what we’ve seen before in Florida, especially, but also Arizona and a few other states.
Look to see more and more of this trend in the coming years. Just as we’re finding that the green and union limbs of the Left are increasingly at war with each other, conservatives have some fights and realignments going on, too. One is between the folks who mostly are conservative on cultural, social, and perhaps tax policy grounds against the more libertarian-tinged group that gets very heated about any perceived infringement of civil and individual liberties.
Liz Mair (@LizMair) is the founder, owner, and president of Mair Strategies LLC and a GOP political consultant. She is a longtime critic of Sen. Elizabeth Warren and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
