[Background: The fossil fuel industries, notably the Koch brothers, are assaulting the U.S. political system with unprecedented quantities of money. The Republican party has been targeted for infiltration by the industry’s front organization, the Tea Party. Although the Tea Party comprises a small percentage of the G.O.P., the party’s leadership has been forced to pander to the most extreme demands of the Tea Party, which include total destruction of labor unions, a rollback of environmental protections, and aggressive  exploitation of fossil fuel resources –  “Drill, baby, drill.”  Republican candidates for the 2012 Presidential election must toe the new Koch-sponsored party line, which is that global warming is a hoax, and any attempts to avert the accelerating anthropogenic climate catastrophe will “kill jobs.” Accordingly, the following five Republican politicians, who once acknowledged the danger of global warming, now deny it.] By Michael Scherer
24 March 2011 When news broke of Jon Huntsman’s serious consideration of a run for president last month, several conservative pundits, including the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, dismissed the former Utah governor’s chances by pointing to his moderate record on global warming, which they predicted would play poorly among the GOP’s conservative base. Indeed, Huntsman was a vocal booster of the Western Climate Initiative, which promoted the possibility of a carbon cap-and-trade program. “Until we put a value on carbon, we are never going to be able to get serious about dealing with Climate Change long term,” Huntsman said back in 2008. “Now putting a value on carbon either suggests you get a carbon tax or you get a cap-and-trade system underway.” This is obviously a long way from the current GOP orthodoxy on climate change, which holds that any attempt to regulate carbon is, as House Speaker John Boehner puts it, “a job-killing national energy tax on struggling families and small business.” But Huntsman is far from the only 2012 GOP contender who will have to explain past support for confronting climate change on the campaign trail. In point of fact, carbon regulation was not so verboten in the GOP just a few years ago. Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and Newt Gingrich all have supported efforts to combat climate change. “I also support cap and trade of carbon emissions,” Mike Huckabee declared in 2007, while campaigning in New Hampshire. In the same year, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin set up a “Climate Change Sub-Cabinet” to deal with the problem in her state. Of the major candidates now inching towards a run, only Haley Barbour can boast of a clean record of opposing carbon regulation, dating from Barbour’s work as a lobbyist for heavily polluting energy companies. So as a service to GOP voters preparing their early 2012 crib sheets, here is a quick-and-dirty look–in six parts, with video and links–of how this year’s potential candidates have approached the carbon issue: …

On Global Warming, No Clear Skies For Most 2012 GOP Contenders