Huntsman Picks Bush-Era Environmental Lawyer As Policy Boss; Pick Not NEARLY Far Right Enough To GOP

[hatrack]

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The former Utah governor will be the keynote speaker July 28 at the Theodore Roosevelt Banquet for the advocacy group Republicans for Environmental Protection, an organization that has criticized House Republicans for their attacks on the Obama administration’s environmental policies. Huntsman also appears to have sent a message with his hiring this month of Mark McIntosh, an environmental attorney from the George W. Bush White House, as his campaign’s top policy director.

McIntosh most recently worked for former White House General Counsel C. Boyden Gray’s law firm representing industry clients. But what antagonizes the right is a resumé that also includes stints managing policy operations at the Pew Environment Group, handling water and natural resource cases in Florida with Earthjustice and ties to a family foundation that supports the likes of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters and the Earth Day Network.

“To grasp just how significant is McIntosh’s selection, imagine if at the outset of his campaign for the 2000 GOP presidential nomination George W. Bush had appointed as his top policy adviser Carol Browner, former EPA administrator and longtime environmental adviser to Vice President Al Gore,” Mark Tapscott, editorial editor at the Washington Examiner, wrote last week. Daniel Kish, a former House and Senate GOP energy committee staffer, said McIntosh’s role in the Huntsman campaign adds to an existing base of doubts among many Republicans.

“If you believe in more affordable, more American and more voluminous energy, then it’s kind of hard to believe a guy who was at Earthjustice, the Bush and Pew Environment is going to share the same views that most of the people voting in the Republican primary are interested in,” said Kish, now the senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research, an oil-industry funded group.

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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/59148.html