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Greens not friendless among House GOP
By Darren Samuelsohn
8/4/11 

No, Theodore Roosevelt hasn’t been reincarnated. 

But environmentalists playing defense all year against the House GOP legislative agenda have found a few helpful friends among a 240-member conference steeped in tea party influence. 

Dozens of purple-state Republicans have broken ranks with their party leadership to take the pro-green position during floor and committee votes spanning more than 100 bills and amendments. 

Granted, the defections seldom come all at the same time, meaning the number of actual environmental victories can be counted on one hand. 

Still, greens look at the list of occasional allies as a reminder that lawmakers fear being penalized if they venture too far out against their districts’ interests on wildlife conservation and air, water and land pollution. 

“Votes for the environment are good for the country, good for their reelection and ultimately good for their party,” said Scott Slesinger, legislative director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. 

Republicans have a variety of reasons for taking their pro-green stands in 2011. Many sit atop the list of potential Democratic pickups because they represent districts and states that went for Barack Obama or John Kerry in the last two presidential campaigns, including Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. 

Several also said they’re not under the same kind of GOP leadership demands that forced floor unity in past sessions of Congress, where votes across the aisle could mean losing out on a cherished committee assignment or draw an officially sanctioned primary challenge. 

“The leadership to their great credit understand that we all come from diverse backgrounds and divergent districts and have been very gracious and understanding that we’ve got a job to do and they let us do it,” said Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, one of 37 Republicans to vote with Democrats last month to pass an amendment that allows the Interior Department to continue new listings under the Endangered Species Act. 

Republican veterans of past environmental battles say the number of green allies this year really isn’t all that big, something they attribute foremost to the fear of getting a tea party primary challenger. 

“It should be an embarrassment for the party,” said former Rep. Sherwood Boehlert of New York, now a vice chairman of the League of Conservation Voters’s board and an honorary board member of Republicans for Environmental Protection. “There are several more, in magnitudes of 10, who’d like to do it but find it politically inconvenient or feel it’d create too much angst in certain segments of their constituency.”

“I still think there’s a hangover of the ability of the tea party last cycle, the willingness to field primary challengers against people they viewed as moderate, people who weren’t 100 percent with their orthodoxy,” said David Jenkins, government affairs director at Republicans for Environmental Protection. 

Several House Republicans brushed off concern about the tea party in 2012 challenging them because of their pro-environment votes, or for that matter, the votes they’ve taken on any issues that can be seen as too liberal. 

Read the rest of the story at Politico




 
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