Is Mitt Romney conservative?

Douglas MacKinnon:

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As their standard bearer going into battle with Barack Obama next fall, do Republican primary voters really want the person who drew up the blueprint for Obama-care?

Worse, do Republican primary voters really want the person who the out-of-control job and freedom killing Obama EPA looked to for some of its most draconian ideas?

As reported in the conservative blogs Moonbattery and HOTAIR; “the Romney administration in 2005 essentially did what Barack Obama’s EPA wants to do now.  He imposed CO2 emission caps — the “toughest in the nation” — in an effort to curtail traditional energy production. 

“Not only did Romney impose these costly new regulations, he then imposed price caps to keep power companies from passing the cost along to the consumer.  As we have seen in Romney-Care, regulation and price controls eventually drive businesses into bankruptcy or relocation.”

More chilling than that bit of socialist nanny-state big government interference is who Romney looked to for advice regarding the plan.   As reported by these two conservative sites, it was none other than Obama’s Chief “science” adviser, John Holdren.

Are you kidding me?  Is anyone in the GOP paying attention to what is going on here?  Is the Republican establishment so desperate to hold on to its power that it will continually look the other way as a chameleon-like candidate not only dreams up the ideas used by far-left Obama White House, but praises one of the people most reviled by the conservative movement?

With regard to this subject, then-Gov. Romney’s office trumpeted its energy and job-killing plan by saying in part: “Today’s regulations will achieve our aggressive environmental goals and provide incentives to push technological development,” said Stephen Pritchard, Secretary of Environmental Affairs.

“In the development of greenhouse gas policy, Romney Administration officials have elicited input from environmental and economic policy experts.

“These include John Holdren,professor of environmental policy at Harvard University and chair of the NationalCommission on Energy Policy and Billy Pizer, an economist at Resources for the Future, anenvironmental policy think-tank based in Washington D.C”

Again, is anyone paying attention to these surreal, anything but conservative, facts?

Governor Romney’s office then closed the memo by proudly stating:

“Implementing these regulations represents the latest in a series of initiatives that the Romney administration has undertaken to address air pollution.

“In 2004, Governor Romney announced the Massachusetts Climate Protection Plan, which laid out acoordinated statewide response to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the climate.”

You can’t make this up.  Something that sounds as if it was drafted in the bowels of the Obama EPA was actually part of a memo released with great fan-fare by Governor Romney on December 7, 2005.

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So far Romney has not been nicked in the debates on his environmental policies as governor.  The facts in this story look ready made for an ad by his opponents in the primary.  Perry is probably the only one with the resources to put together such an ad.