Claim: GOP rethinking their disdain for UN Paris climate accord – ‘Co-opt it, don’t crush it’
“This is a very sinister program,” Marlo Lewis, of CEI, said of the Paris accord. “What happens if the next president is a progressive, like Hillary Clinton would have been? As long as this Frankenstein monster is out there, with the right people at the top, it can revert right back to where Obama left it.”
“It was a promise,” Chris Horner of the Energy and Environment Legal Institute said of Trump’s vow to withdraw from the Paris accord. “Should the president keep his promise? We argue he should. There is no political upside to the president breaking his promise.” Horner expressed alarm at all the “rationalizations” he is hearing from Republicans for backing away from that promise. “We are hearing more every day,” he said.
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Republicans are increasingly adopting the point of view that there isn’t much upside to walking away from the Paris accord beyond the burst of satisfaction it would give core Trump voters. Politicos who were once among the most vocal opponents of the agreement are reconsidering, as they grow concerned about the prospect of the United States removing itself from one of the most influential forums for steering global energy policy — and one that doesn’t place particularly onerous obligations on the nation.
Co-opt it, don’t crush it, is fast becoming a mantra among a broadening circle of advisors to the administration, much to the horror of the free market absolutists and anti-globalism activists who took the accord for as good as dead the day Trump was elected. The president plans to announce by the end of May what direction the administration will go.
