ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 24, 1996 TAG: 9611250057
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JERRY TAYLOR
POLITICIANS have long been spooked by the environmental lobby. When surveyed, 70 percent to 80 percent of Americans identify themselves as environmentalists. With tens of thousands of members, an army of dedicated and politically savvy grass-roots activists, one of the most sophisticated public-relations machines in Washington and a collective budget of $300 million, the green lobby flexes the kind of political muscle that reduces even staunch Republican partisans like House Speaker Newt Gingrich to a state of wide-eyed political fear.
But the vaunted power of the green lobby is built not on actual voter behavior but on pollster-driven smoke and mirrors. When green candidates and initiatives are placed before voters, they not only lose, but lose big. The green political emperor, who bestrides Washington like a colossus, has no clothes.
Consider the fate of green ballot-initiatives earlier this month. None of the "marquee" environmental questions was approved by voters.
While environmental leaders blame their losses on "massive, industry-funded campaigns" against them, those complaints ring hollow. Other ballot initiatives - the California Civil Rights Initiative and anti-tax initiatives in Nevada, South Dakota, and Florida for instance - were also dramatically outspent but victorious nonetheless. Moreover, those initiatives won without the army of grass-roots activists deployed by the environmental lobby, or the overwhelmingly sympathetic press routinely available for green causes.
Although you'd never know it given all the hoopla over the environmental vote, environmentalists have lost 27 of 30 major green ballot-initiatives over the past eight years. So when voters have been directly asked to speak to the agenda advanced by the environmental lobby, they have consistently and overwhelmingly spoken against it.
Green candidates haven't fared much better. While environmentalists are crowing about the defeat of targeted incumbents this year, there is less green muscle here than meets the eye.
First, the targeted races of both the League of Conservation Voters (who compiled a "dirty dozen" list of their chief targets) and the Sierra Club overlapped the "should-win" list of Democratic Party strategists. For example, the hapless Michael Flanagan (the Republican heir to Daniel Rostenkowski's House seat) earned a place on the League's "Dirty Dozen" list and drew tens of thousands of dollars of independent environmental expenditures. Yet no one on the planet expected him to hold on to such an overwhelmingly Democratic district.
Neither the league nor the Sierra Club targeted more prominent "anti-environmentalists" such as House Majority Whip Tom DeLay or House Resource Committee Chairman Don Young. The reason is simple: Environmentalists were primarily interested in taking credit for a high political body count (not in punishing their most dangerous opponents) to make their job of political intimidation easier in 1997.
Exit polls (the second most reliable indicator of voter sentiment after the election itself) indicate that, when asked about the most important issues in the campaign, environmental issues were trumped by taxes, Medicare, foreign policy, the deficit, the economy, education and crime. All the polling data to the contrary was done before Election Day and conducted with shamelessly leading questions (written by the environmental lobby itself) designed to elicit "green" responses.
Despite approximately $10 million in independent environmental expenditures - the largest green electoral offensive in history - and the concentrated (and invariably demagogic) elevation of environmental issues before the voters, the Senate next year will be even more conservative and hostile to the environmentalist agenda than it was before the election. The House, by all indications, will probably follow the same environmental script it did in 1996.
Two conclusions can be drawn from the elections. First, voters approve of "environmentalism" in general but are more often than not hostile to the environmental lobby's policy agenda. The reason (according to several interesting, nonbiased polls) is that voters don't think that centralizing money, power and authority in government bureaucracies is the best way to protect the environment. Second, voters will not automatically dismiss congressmen accused of "gutting" environmental standards, even if they believe that is what's going on.
It's time that politicians realize there's less to the environmental lobby than meets the eye. They should liberate themselves from the political straitjacket that prevents them from considering the kind of sweeping, thoroughgoing policy reforms necessary to harmonize environmental protection, economic health and constitutional, limited government.
Jerry Taylor is director of natural-resource studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
RICHARD MILLHOLLAND/Los Angeles Times
POLITICIANS have long been spooked by the environmental lobby. When surveyed, 70 percent to 80 percent of Americans identify themselves as e nvironmentalists. With tens of thousands of members, an army of dedicated and politically savvy grass-roots activists, one of the most sophisticated public-relations machines in Washington and a collective budget of $300 million, the green lobby flexes the kind of political muscle that reduces even staunch Republican partisans like House Speaker Newt Gingrich to a state of wide-eyed political fear.
But the vaunted power of the green lobby is built not on actual voter behavior but on pollster-driven smoke and mirrors. When green candidates and initiatives are placed before voters, they not only lose, but lose big. The green political emperor, who bestrides Washington like a colossus, has no clothes.
Consider the fate of green ballot-initiatives earlier this month. None of the "marquee" environmental questions was approved by voters.
While environmental leaders blame their losses on "massive, industry-funded campaigns" against them, those complaints ring hollow. Other ballot initiatives - the California Civil Rights Initiative and anti-tax initiatives in Nevada, South Dakota, and Florida for instance - were also dramatically outspent but victorious nonetheless. Moreover, those initiatives won without the army of grass-roots activists deployed by the environmental lobby, or the overwhelmingly sympathetic press routinely available for green causes.
Although you'd never know it given all the hoopla over the environmental vote, environmentalists have lost 27 of 30 major green ballot-initiatives over the past eight years. So when voters have been directly asked to speak to the agenda advanced by the environmental lobby, they have consistently and overwhelmingly spoken against it.
Green candidates haven't fared much better. While environmentalists are crowing about the defeat of targeted incumbents this year, there is less green muscle here than meets the eye.
First, the targeted races of both the League of Conservation Voters (who compiled a "dirty dozen" list of their chief targets) and the Sierra Club overlapped the "should-win" list of Democratic Party strategists. For example, the hapless Michael Flanagan (the Republican heir to Daniel Rostenkowski's House seat) earned a place on the League's "Dirty Dozen" list and drew tens of thousands of dollars of independent environmental expenditures. Yet no one on the planet expected him to hold on to such an overwhelmingly Democratic district.
Neither the league nor the Sierra Club targeted more prominent "anti-environmentalists" such as House Majority Whip Tom DeLay or House Resource Committee Chairman Don Young. The reason is simple: Environmentalists were primarily interested in taking credit for a high political body count (not in punishing their most dangerous opponents) to make their job of political intimidation easier in 1997.
Exit polls (the second most reliable indicator of voter sentiment after the election itself) indicate that, when asked about the most important issues in the campaign, environmental issues were trumped by taxes, Medicare, foreign policy, the deficit, the economy, education and crime. All the polling data to the contrary was done before Election Day and conducted with shamelessly leading questions (written by the environmental lobby itself) designed to elicit "green" responses.
Despite approximately $10 million in independent environmental expenditures - the largest green electoral offensive in history - and the concentrated (and invariably demagogic) elevation of environmental issues before the voters, the Senate next year will be even more conservative and hostile to the environmentalist agenda than it was before the election. The House, by all indications, will probably follow the same environmental script it did in 1996.
Two conclusions can be drawn from the elections. First, voters approve of "environmentalism" in general but are more often than not hostile to the environmental lobby's policy agenda. The reason (according to several interesting, nonbiased polls) is that voters don't think that centralizing money, power and authority in government bureaucracies is the best way to protect the environment. Second, voters will not automatically dismiss congressmen accused of "gutting" environmental standards, even if they believe that is what's going on.
It's time that politicians realize there's less to the environmental lobby than meets the eye. They should liberate themselves from the political straitjacket that prevents them from considering the kind of sweeping, thoroughgoing policy reforms necessary to harmonize environmental protection, economic health and constitutional, limited government.
Jerry Taylor is director of natural-resource studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
LENGTH: Long : 165 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Richard Millholland/LA Timesby CNB