Last June, EPA released an ambitious proposal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. Many state regulatory agencies and went into near panic, business trade groups into battle, and conservatives into existential alarm over one of the most ambitious regulatory initiatives ever to come out of the EPA.
The GOP, however, has no strategy to roll the regulations back save for bitter complaint and wishful thinking. Whether Republicans like it or not, EPA greenhouse gas regulation appears here to stay. The question for the Right is whether to invest in a hopeless rearguard action to block the rules or to craft an attractive political initiative to displace those rules with something less onerous.
As of now, the Right appears to be inclined toward “hopeless rearguard action.” That’s too bad, because “just saying no” is “just saying yes” to the regulatory status quo. And conservatives can do better.
Read all about it in my blog post at The Hill today.