Politics center stage as GOP touts a brighter shade of green

Abstract

In an attempt to counter recent Clinton Administration attacks on the environmental record of Republicans, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) has been making sure that everybody knows that Republicans want a clean, healthy environment as much as anyone else, but that current command-and-control federal environmental regulations not the way to go. He believes it is necessary to get the message out that Republicans are serious about running an intelligent, rational environmental policy. Speaking late last month at a Washington, D.C., fundraiser for the Denver-based Coalition of Republican Environmental Activists (CREA), Gingrich was determined to counter the bad publicity Republican candidates encountered during the 1996 congressional elections by giving a more palatable rendition of what it means to be a Republican environmentalist. And Republicans with less than pristine records have something to worry about. In 1996, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) launched its first Dirty Dozen campaign, ...