Cap-and-trade attacks went both ways for Romney in New Hampshire primary

Either way, past support for cap-and-trade is a liability with a clear majority of GOP voters.

Climatewire reports,

… The super PAC Restore our Future, which supports Romney, attacked Gingrich in the days before the election for having “so much in common” with President Obama, such as supporting cap and trade and expressing belief in climate change.

At the same time, Santorum was leveling similar attacks at Romney, who supported carbon reductions when he was governor, before changing course to oppose the 10-state cap-and-trade program called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

“We need someone who’s going to make President Obama the issue,” Santorum said on Fox News last week, adding that Romney is ill-equipped to make a “sharp contrast” with Obama because Romney has “a bad record on climate change” and other issues.

Santorum has the benefit of never supporting emission-pinching programs, a distinction that some GOP operatives say is a valuable comparison among today’s conservative electorate.

“It’s Ricky’s way of saying, ‘I’m the true believer; these guys are the heretics,'” said Mike McKenna, a Republican energy strategist who isn’t affiliated with a primary candidate. “It’s very smart and it does have traction. For good or ill, climate change has the feel now of a religious item on both sides.”

Santorum’s strategy didn’t work in New Hampshire. Romney outpaced all of his opponents among conservative voters, attracting 33 percent of those who describe themselves as “very conservative,” compared to Santorum’s 26 percent. Romney also won easily among evangelicals and tea party supporters…

6 thoughts on “Cap-and-trade attacks went both ways for Romney in New Hampshire primary”

  1. I have not seen his tax returns, but various sources claim Romney is registered in Massachusetts,
    using the address of one of his sons in Belmont, an affluent suburb of Boston, supposedly in the
    basement of the kid’s 8000 square foot shack.

  2. Good reasoning although one doesn’t have to be born with a silver spoon to be willing to spend as much of other people’s money as is necessary to assuage one’s guilt for having more than the next.

  3. To be a Liberal is to feel guilty at having been born and raised ‘well-off’, but to have no guilt about atoning for that privelege with social programs paid for by others.

  4. I am surprised that no one has yet inquired whether Romney files his state tax return in Massachusetts, which is a high tax state, or New Hampshire, which has no income tax. He has homes in both. It annoys me how the liberals from Massachusetts have migrated into southern New Hampshire to escape the Massachusetts taxes and yet bring their big government mentality with them. This has changed New Hampshire from a conservative Republican state into a neutral state. At least it isn’t a socialist Vermont where the New York City people who thought New York was too conservative have migrated.

  5. New Hampshire holds open primaries – open in the sense that anyone can vote in any party without prior declaration of party membership. With Obama already the uncontested candidate of the Democrat party, this opens the door for cross-over votes – loyal Democrats voting in the Republican primary to support a weak candidate they know that Obama can easily beat. Since there is no way of knowing for sure how much of that goes on, the results of the NH GOP Primary can be, at best, declared ‘inconclusive.’

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