Republican National
Committeeman Jim Bopp, Jr. has proposed that the GOP adopt a litmus
test that he crafted for Republican candidates, which he has dubbed the
"Resolution on Reagan's Unity Principle for Support of Candidates."
The
test contains a list of 10 issue positions that he believes measures
whether a candidate is conservative enough to merit party support. He
would require that any candidate receiving support agree with at least
eight of the 10 positions.
Bopp's purity test displays colossal
ignorance about conservatism. You cannot define a conservative based on
a static set of policy positions. As Russell Kirk, one of the most
influential conservatives of the 20th Century pointed out:
"Conservatism is not a fixed and immutable body of dogmata."
A
true conservative applies a broad set of conservative principles to
policy questions based on an intellectually honest evaluation of the
issue being addressed. As with any thoughtful exercise, one's
conclusions will vary according to existing knowledge and circumstances.
There
is much to dislike about the Orwellian purity test that Bopp wants the
RNC to adopt when it meets next month in Hawaii, but one of the policy
statements in the test deserves special criticism.
Here it is: "We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and
trade legislation."
The
statement is historical revisionism on a breathtaking scale. For the
benefit of the political amnesiacs who wrote this piece of
contradictory nonsense, cap-and-trade originated in the Reagan
administration as a market-oriented strategy for reducing acid rain
pollution. Cap-and-trade was proposed to counter the one-size-fits-all,
command-and-control rules that Democrats and their liberal
environmental allies wanted to impose.
By giving power companies
the flexibility to cut pollution in economically sensible ways,
cap-and-trade worked to reduce acid rain, defying the predictions of
bureaucrats that it would never work, the claims of electric utilities
that its costs were unaffordable, and the wails of environmentalists
that tradable emissions allowances were a morally suspect "license to
pollute."
Two decades later, Democrats have finally realized
that the Republican idea was the better idea and have embraced it for
reducing carbon pollution linked to climate change. What a great "I
told you so" moment that could be for the Republicans. Instead,
however, like Orwell's character Winston Smith rewriting history, they
say cap-and-trade is a liberal idea and always was a liberal idea.
Whether
cap-and-trade, a carbon tax, or some other mechanism is the best option
for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is not the point.
Regardless
of one's position on which approach is best for reducing carbon
emissions, this attempt by radicals to turn history inside out and send
a piece of the Republican Party's environmental legacy down the memory
hole does not bode well for the GOP.
In the name of Reagan, they are trying to wreck Reagan's vision of the
GOP as a big-tent party.
In
1984, President Reagan's vision of inclusive, pragmatic conservatism
was rewarded with one of the great electoral landslides of American
history. It appears that the proponents of the litmus tests have
another 1984 in mind.
