Sen. Bob Corker (TN) can be one of the hardest congressional Republicans to pin down ideologically, and he proved that today during Al Gore’s appearance in the Foreign Relations Committee.
Corker’s easygoing criticism of a cap-and-trade system for regulating emissions won him a glowing profile last year in National Review, which called him “the most pleasant surprise conservatives have had” in the Senate since Paul Coverdell in the 1990s.
Wonder what the NRO folks would make of Corker’s kumbaya moment with Gore today? From Corker’s comments to Gore:
I want to tell you that I wish we would just talk about a carbon tax, 100 percent of which would be returned to the American people. So there’s no net dollars that would come out of the American people’s pockets.
Gore, who has proposed a similarly broad carbon tax, agreed with Corker. The two men then heartily concurred on the need to auction off 100% of carbon allowances under a cap-and-trade system — a plan that mirrors President Obama’s.
