The American Spectator

Have you or your business been on the receiving end of mistreatment from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)? If so, you could have a job in a new Herman Cain Administration. The presidential candidate said in an interview that he would like to set up a regulatory reduction commission that includes victims of the renegade government agency. Cain was among several candidates who addressed the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans earlier this month.

“Whenever science does not back up a regulation, it’s gone, that’s the idea,” he said. “If you have been abused by the EPA you are a candidate for this commission. We need to stand up average Americans and job creators and we need to get government back in check.”

Cain’s comments were prompted by the job killing regulations and lawsuits filed by the EPA related to Obama’s climate change agenda.

Recently the EPA announced that they were going to impose unrealistic timelines for the implementation of climate change rules that American Electric Power Chairman Michael G. Morris denounced saying, “We will have to prematurely shut down nearly 25 percent of our current coal-fueled generating capacity, cut hundreds of good power plant jobs, and invest billions of dollars in capital to retire, retrofit and replace coal-fueled power plants. The sudden increase in electricity rates and impacts on state economies will be significant at a time when people and states are still struggling.”

Cain also said he would put permits for oil drilling on “booster rockets” to help revive the Gulf coast economy. Cain is the former chairman and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza.

Other dignitaries in attendance echoed Cain’s concerns about the direction of U.S. energy policy.

“On the one hand, President Obama’s rhetoric says he is about domestic energy development,” Rep. William Cassidy (R-La.) noted. “But his regulatory and taxing regime is anti-domestic energy.”

The congressman also dismissed the idea that new “green jobs” would help to re-charge the economy.

“The president kept saying, don’t worry the jobs that are destroyed will be made up by these other jobs, but this has not occurred, and it seems unlikely to occur.”

Energy was the dominant theme of the conference and has figured prominently into Cain’s public comments.

“From the oil-rich states of Louisiana and Alaska to the mighty dams along rivers across the states, the options for many forms of energy are real and plenty,” he has said. “Still, liberals continue to perpetuate the misunderstanding that the high energy consumption of a thriving nation and conservation of our precious planet are at odds with one another.”

Cain’s criticisms of the EPA will likely play well with the party base. The Republican front-runners, or at least the presumed front runners former Govs. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Tim Pawlenty of Minnosota are both a little too green for rank and file conservatives. (Although Pawlenty has renounced his earlier positions.) The historical connection between radical environmentalism and communism may not be bad theme for Cain to pick up. Adam Bitely, an editor with Net Right Daily unpackages the history here in great detail.