Preface xiii
national security, and our children’s health and futures, and that Americans deserve
the jobs and security that come from becoming the clean energy superpower of the
21st century.” Details of the platforms generally adhere to the partisan trends in
topic foci found in Congress-to-constituent communications.
The Republican Party of 2016 bills itself as “the party of America’s growers, pro-
ducers, farmers, ranchers, foresters, miners, commercial fishermen, and all those
who bring from the earth the crops, minerals, energy, and the bounties of our seas
that are the lifeblood of our economy” (Republican Party Platforms 2016). The plat-
form includes three headlining goals: abundant harvests, a new era in energy, and
environmental progress.
Abundant Harvests
As a part of its abundant harvest plank, the GOP argues that the opinions and live-
lihoods of environmental stakeholders—property owners—must be factored into
policies on the environment. Those who are central to agricultural and energy pro-
duction and exportation are responsible for feeding and powering the U.S. economy,
so the GOP insists that these perspectives are central to a prosperous future.
As agriculture relates to production and trade, the platform indicates that Repub-
licans “oppose the mandatory labeling of genetically modified food” and argue that
“America’s trade negotiators will insist that our global trading partners adhere to
science-based standards with regard to food and health regulations.” While foods
made from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are more often discussed in
Democratic communications, the Republican Party takes a very clear stance in its
platform. On nonagriculture land use, the platform states the following:
Stewardship of the land benefits everyone, and we remain committed to conser-
vation policies based on the preservation, not the restriction, of working lands.
For this reason, ranching on public lands must be fostered, developed, and encouraged.
Furthermore,
The U. S. Forest Service, within the Department of Agriculture, controls around 200
million acres of land with enormous natural resources, especially timber, a renew-
able resource providing jobs for thousands of workers that should be used to the best
economic potential for the nation.
Republicans are more apt to talk about such land use issues as grazing, logging,
drilling, and hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”), both overall and in positive terms,
than Democrats are, and this is true of the differences in party platforms as well.
A New Era in Energy
The 2016 Republican Party platform stresses the GOP’s interest in “the creation
of an all-of-the-above energy strategy,” referring to any sort of energy extraction
or production. The party argues that the federal government ought to devolve
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