Free Republic

Willard Mitt Romney these days could not be more explicit about abandoning President Barack Obama's carbon-dioxide restrictions. "Irresponsibly," Romney wrote in an Aug. 28 op-ed for Foster's Daily Democrat in New Hampshire, the Environmental Protection Agency "declared carbon dioxide, the same carbon dioxide that humans exhale, to be a 'pollutant' that poses risks to human health." He also observed: "Congress had the good sense not to compound our economic challenges by imposing cap-and-trade's extraordinary costs on the American people." Romney's website offers this carbon-friendly promise: "Mitt Romney will eliminate the regulations promulgated in pursuit of the Obama administration's costly and...

MANCHESTER, N.H. — In the first town hall of his freshly announced presidential campaign, Mitt Romney yesterday reaffirmed his view that global warming is occurring and that humans are contributing to it, a position that has been rejected in recent years by many Republicans as the issue has taken on a greater partisan tinge. After opening remarks in which Romney blamed President Obama’s policies for the new anemic hiring figures, the first questioner from the floor — a software developer from Hanover, N.H. — wanted to know the candidate’s position on climate change, an issue his opponents have generally avoided...

Mitt Romney is stacking his team with policy advisers from the George W. Bush administration — and it has conservatives up in arms. The Republican right cringes at some of the high-profile people Romney is leaning on for donations and advice, including three former Bush-era officials whose recent records include lobbying for Solyndra and advocating on behalf of cap-and-trade legislation and carbon taxes. Romney’s long-ago environmental associates are also causing him problems, with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and the conservative blogosphere reveling in 6-year-old news releases showing how two current Obama administration officials — Environmental Protection Agency air chief Gina...