To this day, if you want to bring chills to the spines of conservative Republicans, just mention the name David Souter.
Souter was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush because he was mild-mannered and thought to be able to avoid the bruising confirmation fight that snared Robert Bork.
“He seemed to have felt a commitment to his conservative philosophy for about six months, and then just fell off a cliff into the dark side of liberalism,” said John Sununu, a fellow New Hampshire native and former governor and senator from the Granite State, who had pushed for Souter’s nomination.
Since then, conservatives have tried to prevent this from happening again – to spot the Souters before they got into office or gained lifetime appointments then betrayed the conservative principles of those who put them in office.
Today, some are worried that Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett may not measure up to conservative expectations on the Court, and others doubt whether Elise Stefanik is even as conservative as the woman she replaced as Republican House conference chair, Liz Cheney.
But what’s done is done in those cases. The task now is to identify future Souters – Republicans who would gain our trust and use our names to get elected then turn their backs when it came to policy decisions. And one may be emerging in a south-central Ohio congressional district.
When Rep. Steve Stivers, the Republican who represents the district now, announced last month he was retiring, Brian Stewart, now the District 78 representative to the Ohio House, stepped forward to run for his seat.
In 2015, Stewart, then a commissioner from Pickaway County, helped found the Ohio Conservative Energy Forum, which defined itself as a “coalition designed to be a voice for conservative support for common-sense, all-of-the-above state energy policy.” All mention of Stewart was scrubbed from the site in 2019, and a look at the Ohio Conservative Energy Forum’s documents suggests why.
The group’s founding release cited its approval of then-Gov. John Kasich, himself a Republican who attempted to govern like a Democrat in the statehouse and during his eight terms in the U.S. House, for wanting President Obama’s unconstitutional and counterproductive Clean Power Plan implemented in Ohio to encourage green energy investment.
The group’s statement of principles touted man’s responsibility to be stewards of the Earth, made claims of great job growth in connection with green energy, tied green energy to national security and economic growth and pointed to surveys that voters wanted more government subsidies for green energy.
“OHCEF is a movement of conservatives who recognize clean energy as a solution to sustaining energy dominance, keeping our economy booming and providing power to build and sustain the American way of life,” the front of its website reads.
If that’s not enough to show these groups are intent on Souter-izing energy policy, the Ohio organization is a member of the Conservative Energy Network, which is a network and has somewhat of a relationship with energy but is in no way conservative.
It takes money from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Turner Foundation, the McKnight Foundation and the Argosy Foundation, all left-wing sources. It took $200,000 more from the TomKat Foundation, controlled by left-wing environmental extremist Tom Steyer. It favors “real energy and climate change solutions,” such as a carbon tax and subsidies for green energy.
The Energy Foundation, which funnels liberal dollars to these Souter-ized “conservative” groups, has on its board of directors Gina McCarthy, current White House climate czar and administrator of the EPA under President Barack Obama – appointing her about the time Brian Stewart was getting involved with Ohio Conservative Energy Forum.
All the Republican candidates in Ohio-15 are going to claim to be conservatives. When is the last time you heard a Republican claim to be a moderate? They’re going to say they are for plentiful and affordable energy because the economy comes to a standstill without it.
Some such as Stewart will talk about opportunities for governments – chances to subsidize or forgive taxes – to “invest” in “future technologies,” “create jobs” in “sustainable industries” in pursuit of an “all-of-the-above energy policy” and “expanding efficiency.”
But what they mean is that they want to take money from taxpayers and give it to favored industries so they get brownie points for being green and keep contributions flowing.
We need conservatives who unabashedly make the case for a truly market-based energy policy, one that rewards producers who can bring their products to market most efficiently rather than those who would not be economically or ecologically viable otherwise.
Brian Stewart wants you to think he is that guy. But he’s not, and unlike the case with David Souter, we know enough about him now not to make the same mistake again.
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