This came in today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary e-mail, titled in their table of contents as "The GOP’s Al Gore"…
Arnold Schwarzenegger likes being called "the Green Giant" for his take-charge attitude on global climate change. He’s on the cover of this week’s Newsweek and jets to Washington D.C. today to participate in that magazine’s environmental forum, where he will unapologetically claim the mantle of federalism to push a California-only solution to limits on carbon emissions. "Look, we don’t need Washington," he told Newsweek.
But the Governator is having less luck in inserting himself in the 2008 campaign as some kind of broker on green issues, despite his success in moving California’s presidential primary up to Feb. 5. Last month, the governor met with Rudy Giuliani to urge him to adopt bold measures to fight global warming. When the former New York mayor did indeed answer questions on the issue a few days later, the Associated Press reported that "Schwarzenegger’s public relations team swung into motion, taking credit for getting him to address it."
But since then, his staff has been less eager to pump up claims about the governor’s alleged influence with the mayor. Once safely away from the tractor beam of Arnold’s magnetism, Mr. Giuliani has been quite sensible on the subject. He has questioned the extent to which global warming is caused by man-made activity, saying the science "is not in" on the issue, and has advocated nuclear power as a means of creating clean energy.
Since California has a moratorium on the building of new nuclear power plants, the mayor’s stance isn’t likely to be popular in the Golden State. So while Arnold collects plaudits from the national press for his go-it-alone stance on carbon emissions, he appears to be having less success selling his ideas to the 2008 crop of GOP presidential candidates.