GOP attacks Green New Deal, ‘job-killing regulations’
Speakers focused on “radical environmentalists” and “job-killing regulations” during the second night of the Republican National Convention yesterday as supporters of President Trump attempted to make the case for his reelection based on fears of what a Biden administration would do.
“They want to ramp up the job-killing regulations,” said Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council. “They want to decimate the American energy renaissance that we’ve experienced these last four years. And it will crater our economy.”
Speakers accused Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden of backing the Green New Deal. Biden has proposed an ambitious $2 trillion climate action plan, but he never went so far as to embrace the progressive climate platform.
The Green New Deal has been a familiar punching bag for Republicans, who have used it to accuse Democrats of advancing a socialist agenda.
Robert Vlaisavljevich, mayor of Eveleth, Minn., in the state’s Iron Range, argued that such policies have left mining communities like his behind. He railed against politicians like Green New Deal champion Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
“The radical environmental movement has dragged the Democratic Party so far to the left that they can no longer claim to be our advocates — they are now clearly our adversaries,” Vlaisaljevich said.
“Joe Biden has allowed radicals like AOC to craft his environmental policies,” he added. “The Green New Deal would put entire swaths of our country out of a job — because it’s not about people. It’s about control. Biden’s too weak to ever stand up to them. Donald Trump will.”
Building on the fear of climate regulation, the president’s son Eric Trump repeated a talking point used against the Paris climate agreement.
“The silent majority had no one fighting for them — in either party,” Eric Trump said. “Their so-called leaders were bowing to China, bribing Iran and spending more time worrying about how they were received by the elites in Paris than how Americans would provide for their families in Pittsburgh.”
Republicans pegged the theme of the convention’s second day as the United States being a land of opportunity for all. That included multiple videos and speeches backing the Trump deregulatory agenda and raising fears of economic stagnation should Biden win the election.
That theme included a speech from Jason Joyce, an eighth-generation lobster fisherman from Swan’s Island, Maine.
Joyce celebrated action taken by the Trump administration to undo environmental protections put in place by former President Obama to protect areas off the Atlantic coast through the Antiquities Act.
“As long as Trump is president, fishing families like mine will have a voice,” Joyce said. “But if Biden wins, he’ll be controlled by the environmental extremists who want to circumvent long-standing rules and impose radical changes that hurt our coastal communities.”