Friday, November 7, 2014

Claire Moser — Election Divides GOP On Whether To Seize And Sell America’s Public Lands

In the run-up to Tuesday’s elections, each week seemed to bring a new Republican candidate for federal and state office advocating for America’s national forests, wildlife areas and other public lands to be seized by the states or auctioned off to the highest bidder. Even the Republican National Committee (RNC) passed aresolution endorsing these extreme proposals earlier this year. 
Not all western state Republicans stood by their party’s platform in this election cycle, however. High-profile candidates who won competitive races in the West deliberately distanced themselves from their party’s platform, or avoided taking a stance on the issue altogether during their campaigns. At the same time, a number of western Republicans in competitive races who chose to embrace their party’s extreme stance came up short on Election Night.

Land grabs are also deeply unpopular among voters. Recent public opinion research, conducted by a bipartisan polling team, found that the majority of Western voters firmly oppose proposals to transfer America’s national forests and public lands to state ownership.

One winning candidate who backed away from his initial stance on seizing and selling off public lands was Montana Congressional candidate Ryan Zinke (R). Zinke, who had been an outspoken supporter of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed budget, which would have required the sale of public lands to reduce the deficit, was forced to revise his position after his Democratic opponent ran a popular ad criticizing his stance.
 
The ad, set to the tune of Woody Guthrie’s famous “This Land is Your Land,” elevated the issue to a centraldebate on the campaign. Zinke then clarified that “he supports the ‘framework of the Ryan Budget,’ but opposes selling off public land,” as the Great Falls Tribune reported.…
Privatization of the commons, primitive accumulation, enclosure, the whole neoliberal catastrophe.
For the Republican Party, the growing internal debate over whether America’s public lands should be seized and sold represents a choice between the conservation values of Republican President Theodore Roosevelt and the power of a special interest-driven agenda.
Think Progress
Election Divides GOP On Whether To Seize And Sell America’s Public Lands
Claire Moser

3 comments:

Ryan Harris said...

In June 2010 President Obama signed an executive memo directing agencies to divest excess and surplus real property in an effort to achieve upwards of $8 billion in savings. Paul Ryan's mentor, perhaps?

Anonymous said...

I just want to lay this down now: I am not selling my prostate to the Republican privatizers, no matter how much they offer.

Ryan Harris said...

LOL, Good one Dan.
Hopefully, those new HPV vaccines will let the next generation keep their prostates so they don't have to go through all that surgeries, radiation, anti-hormones and chemo that have become a right of passage for a majority of men.