Among the audience that Pope Francis hopes to influence during his upcoming visit to the US, many young US conservatives who are increasingly waking up to the threat of climate change, and the opportunities of the renewable energy economy.
In a recent swing to a very conservative corner of Michigan, Michele Combs of “Young Conservatives for Energy Reform” brought the message of an emerging paradigm shift.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Michele Combs and Lt. Gen. Richard Zilmer (Ret.) seem like an unlikely couple to promote alternative energy and clean energy policies – especially to the West Michigan Young Republicans.
Combs, a former “Young Republican of the Year,” is president of Young Conservatives for Energy Reform, a group she created two years ago.
Zilmer is a former commander of Operation Iraqi Freedom who serves on the eight-year-old Military Advisory Board for the CNA Corp., a non-profit think tank based in Washington, D.C.
Both were in Grand Rapids on Monday, Nov. 17, to address the West Michigan Young Republicans.
Though clean energy is a cause trumpeted primarily in progressive environmental groups, Combs said it’s also a message that is being well-received by young conservatives.
“They want something done about energy efficiency and saving the planet,” Combs said during a taping of “West Michigan Week,” a weekly news program on WGVU-TV. “This is not a Republican issue or a Democratic issue. This is a family issue.”
Combs said her group is bypassing the Republican establishment with its message of alternative energy.
“This is an issue the Republicans have not wanted to address. But we’re hearing it from the grass roots,” she said.
gotta love the conservative movement, when all else fails talk sensibly and pretend you were there the whole time, how do you spell hypocrite?
I agree with you Peter that the Republicans are hypocrites, and not just on AGW. I can still remember Dick Cheney railing against gays, while his own daughter is a lesbian (and she’s a conservative Republican). I’ve known anti-abortion Republicans who suddenly decide it’s OK for their knocked-up daughter to have an abortion “just this one time” because of “exceptional circumstances.”
Unfortunately, the Republicans don’t have a monopoly on hypocrisy. Obama’s lofty talk of helping out the middle class while he hands Wall Street at least $16 trillion in bailouts ought to give liberal Democrats some pause. All his talk of openness, while he has cracked down on whistleblowers in government far more severely than Bush. Talk of decriminalizing marijuana while his Justice Department keeps busting people in states that have decriminalized medical marijuana. He decries police brutality while he keeps sending tanks and other military grade weapons to small town police forces (which now use them for everything, including collecting overdue traffic fines). And his “reboot” with Russia – Obama may yet be the president who triggers WW III, over nothing.
But Obama gives good speeches. I must credit him with that. Bush Jr was painful to listen to when he spoke on TV. Then again, Bush provided better material for writing satire and drawing comics.
I lean to the left but I don’t fall off the cliff. I agree with a lot of what you have to say abouyt Obama. quoting the commissioner for the Batman trilogy. He is not the leader we need bu he might just be the one we deserve.