Pombo Land Giveaway: Dead (For Now)

This is yesterday's news, but still important. The mining law revision that Rep. Richard Pombo (R-WWE) snuck into the budget reconciliation bill has been removed:

Republicans in Congress late Tuesday stripped proposed mining law revisions from a budget bill that critics said could have led to the sell-off of millions of acres of federal land, including portions of national parks and forests, such as Death Valley National Park and Mojave National Preserve.

The package faced mounting bipartisan opposition from Western senators, whose support was crucial, after scores of groups, including a coalition of hunting and fishing interests, complained. A Senate spokesman said opposition to the mining law revisions could have jeopardized passage of the budget bill.

Let's put this in perspective: Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO) has a 96% lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union; Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) and Rep. Dennis Rehberg (R-MT) have a 94% rating; Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) has 90%; and Sen. Craig Thomas (R-WY) has 88%. The mining law revision was too wingnutty for these guys, every one of whom opposed it.

Two things are worth noting here. The first is that for at least some of them, this is a tactical retreat: as the article says, they abandoned the mining revision in order to save drilling in ANWR. That makes it a victory, but not an unambiguous victory.

The second is that what seems to have done the job is pressure from hunting and fishing organizations, as Matt at Say No to Pombo points out. This is exactly the constituency that Brian Schweitzer courted to win the Montana governorship, and the Republicans' devotion to resource extraction industries above all else makes them (some argue) a potential Democratic constituency in the West.

[That's all, folks]