Pawlenty On Climate - Suggestion To "Look At It" Too Radical; Running Like Hell From Past Position

[hatrack]

Tim Pawlenty has been apologizing to anyone who will listen for his so-called flirtation with cap-and-trade climate policy, recently dismissing his efforts to “look at it” as misguided and slamming carbon limits as “burdensome on the economy.” The former Minnesota governor has even renounced his previous conviction about the validity of climate science and now asserts that the research is “faulty” and can’t be trusted.

“I looked at , like most of the other leading candidates did, some years ago—flirted with it, for sure,” he said in an interview last month on CNBC. “But I’ve just admitted my mistake and said I was wrong.… It would be harmful to the economy. It’s based on flawed science, and we should throw it out the window.”

EDIT

No other candidate, however, has made a more jaw-dropping about-face than Pawlenty. Despite his current claims, Pawlenty did far more than flirt with climate change: He made the issue a signature of his administration and of his 2007-08 tenure as head of the National Governors Association. He aggressively led state, regional, and national efforts to promote cap-and-trade legislation and pushed through one of the country’s toughest renewable-energy mandates in Minnesota. Along the way, he won other Republicans over to the cause. And he did it in the national spotlight, as his star rose high enough to put him on McCain’s short list of possible running mates.

Pawlenty’s clean-energy and climate push began in earnest at the end of 2006, after he narrowly won a bruising reelection race against Democrat Mike Hatch. Although Pawlenty’s first term had been defined by fiscal and social conservatism, he campaigned as a moderate, and he wanted to create a more centrist profile in his second term. As a practical matter, he also had to move his ideas through the Democratic-controlled Legislature in St. Paul. A clean-energy push fit the bill perfectly: Minnesota’s windswept prairies had the potential to generate vast supplies of low-carbon electricity, along with jobs in manufacturing and installing wind turbines. Plus, the governor had bipartisan support for some form of renewable-energy legislation.

EDIT

http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/pawlenty-running-from-his-past-moves-on-environmental-policy-20110623

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. Tee Paw is rapidly becoming a hasbeen jerk

The sooner he disappears off the stage, the better.

[Angry Dragon]

2. t-paw is polling at 7%

behind palin and backmann
and palin isn't even in the race

[damntexdem]

4. But I thought that Palin was half in the race.

;-)

And that she'll half-way campaign.

[Old and In the Way]

3. Dealing with climate change pro-actively costs money!

Living the consequences of climate change, in Republican world, is cost free. But in Republican world, the Earth is only 6000 years old and people were riding dinosaurs the day after gawd created it.