I found a fine glossy piece of mail in my mailbox today, addressed to my wife. It promotes Senator Ayotte’s environmental street cred as a way to build a mailing list. The purveyors want you to “say thank you” to the Senator for her defense of statist environmental policy the environment. By defense, they mean her vocal support for executive action and use of the bureaucracy to place a shadow tax on electricity forever without legislative consequence under the Obama Clean Power Plan.
The problem is, of course, that if you support that, you aren’t really a Republican even if you have registered as one. You are a Democrat, a progressive, and – like the sponsors of the mailer – on a mission to advance a centrally planned statist agenda whether you mean to or not.
The mailer is paid for by Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES). They, like Ayotte, are (deliberately or otherwise) advocating for the loss of local control under the guise of ‘good for the environment.’ It’s not good for your wage or employment environment. It is not good for your cost of living environment. And, with China and India building more coal plants per year than are still operating in the US it won’t do anything for the environment-environment either. The Clean Power Plan may actually make matters worse.
America runs some of the cleanest fossil fuel plants on the planet. India and a long list of second and third world countries would happily buy power, fossil fuels, or clean technologies from the US to grow their economies–complete with the strategic diplomatic advantages such relations abide, if we offered them. We’ve got plenty now and could have a lot more “plenty” without any more government spending, or taxes or regulations. Instead, we have a government hell-bent of divesting itself of the economic and commercial advantages of massive globe-dominating stores of mineral resources and superior technology in deference to shoddy science meant to justify an ideological agenda.
Sen. Ayotte, whatever else you may think of her “accomplishments,” has not just sided with the left on this agenda; she has embraced a nationwide socialist solution to advance it.
The mailer is frosting on the cake because CRES is funded by some folks with the same ambitions as Obama.
A Huffington Post examination of tax records, accessed on CitizenAudit.org, found that in its first year of operations, Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions was funded with $1 million in seed money from two nonprofits often linked to liberal causes. From June 2012 through June 2013, the group received $500,000 each from the Advocacy Fund and the Trust for Energy Innovation.
“Conservative” Grassroots groups don’t get a million in seed-money. And no “conservative” group gets that kind of cash from these folks unless they are a front for advancing a liberal agenda.
The Advocacy Fund, formerly the Tides Advocacy Fund, is a key backer of liberal nonprofits across the country, distributing $11.8 million in grants in 2013. It currently funds groups engaged in promoting immigration reform, increasing worker protections, reforming chemical safety laws and increasing investment in the solar energy industry. The Advocacy Fund did not respond to a request for comment.
The newer Trust for Energy Innovation, which also did not respond to a request for comment, sent out $12 million from its inception in 2011 through May 2013, and its recipients included such traditionally Democratic environmental groups as the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club.
CRES also has strong ties to The Republican Main Street Partnership, well known for advancing Democrat party principles.
And Ayotte has received $500,000.00 in support through an environmental Super PAC with goals that align with CPP.
Now, you may be saying, Kelly has no control over what PACs or environmental groups throw their support behind her but that is not true. She does have control over how she votes and what she says in support of issues and her own words are what has drawn this left-wing money to her defense. If that doesn’t in any way trouble you then perhaps you are comfortable with a centrally planned statist government whittling away at whatever may be left of your liberties. You are welcome to those comforts but these are not the things I look for in a Republican candidate for any office.
So my point (and the real problem for Conservative and Libertarians in the GOP) isn’t that Ayotte is no better than her Democrat challenger, almost as bad, or tolerably better, it is that we have both an opportunity and an obligation to try and do better.
This “voices of the people thing” is predicated on the idea that when the people you elect don’t do what they said they would or do things with the power and money you afford them access, which you oppose, that you (the people) should support a challenge for that office by someone who might actually behave a bit more like a member of the party whose values they claim to represent.
The very idea that someone, anyone, has a right to an office simply because they happen to be in it today is anathema to a representative republic. This is not Ayotte’s senate seat it is yours, and if you don’t find someone to support other than Ayotte you are going to lose it to the Democrats because, as I said here,
“…for those still clinging to the “well she’d be with us on more votes than Hassan” argument, understand that Kelly Ayotte doesn’t have to be with us on everything. But if she is not down in DC trying to increase your liberties, defend rule of law, shift power back to the states and the people, or in defense of your property rights, what difference does it make if she is with us on anything else?
Without those things nothing else matters.”
Why suffer through 6 more years of Kelly Ayotte’s idea of what a Republican should want from government if we can find a better Republicans for the job?
Opposite side of the mailer
