South Dakota Republicans should challenge national GOP ethanol plank

By Gordon Garnos

AT ISSUE: Lately, the ethanol industry has been more targeted than treasured. It pretty well weathered the storm about how it was the cause of just about everything bad, that is until the national Republican convention in St. Paul. That is when the GOP platform included the plank eliminating the ethanol mandates. That was a very serious strategic error on the part of the national GOP. South Dakota's Republican leadership has so far been timorous in defending these mandates that have helped develop one of our state's major industries.

IS FLIP­FLOP THE NAME of the game for the national GOP when it comes to supporting the development of one of South Dakota's major industries, the manufacture of ethanol? It was just four years ago when the Republicans met at their national convention to nominate a president and to list the various planks in its campaign platform. The one plank called for "efforts to expand the use of biodiesel and ethanol, which can reduce America's dependence on foreign oil while increasing revenues to farmers."

The apparent flip-flop came a couple of weeks ago when the Republicans met again, this time in St. Paul. Of course, the big news was the nominations for John McCain for president and Sarah Palin as vice president, but hidden down deep in their platform was the plank putting to an end the ethanol mandates. This includes the federal subsidies it has been receiving as well as the 2007 mandate to require the production of biofuels to a total of 36 billion gallons to be blended into gasoline by 2022.

IN READING ABOUT the obvious change in attitude by the national Republican caucus one could feel that Texas Governor Rick Perry may be getting his way after all with the ethanol industry. Last April he wrote the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asking it to suspend the nation's renewable fuel standard which was expanded by Congress.

Thank goodness, the EPA last month denied Perry's request. It responded, the mandate "remains an important tool in our ongoing efforts to reduce America's green house gas emissions and lessen our dependence on foreign oil."

Now, with the latest plank in the national Republican platform, one cannot be sure what the stand is or will be in the Washington politick. But, at the present time, it looks like the national Republicans have done a flip-flop in their support of the ethanol industry.

While I said the South Dakota leadership appears to have been weak in its attempts to remove the plank, our Senator John Thune did say his party, "got it wrong on this issue..." and he didn't see how this year's ethanol plank of cutting the mandate fits with reducing the country's dependence on foreign fossil fuels.

ACCORDING TO THE Associated Press, Thune said, "That is a huge mistake. If we keep doing what we're doing, we¹re going to keep getting what we're getting, and right now we're 70 percent dependent on foreign oil."

We certainly can't argue his point, but we do wonder who was listening?

Obviously it wasn't too many people at the convention or they wouldn't have shied away from the plank of four years ago when they praised the importance of biofuels and ethanol development.

Of course, on the national scene, the GOP is listening to others. Ethanol has been the scapegoat for consumer outrage about the increased food prices.

But in reality, the real causes, as we have mentioned before, have been the world drought, a weak dollar, oil prices and, perhaps the worst culprit of all, commodity market speculation. These have affected food prices many times more than has ethanol and biofuel production.

HOWEVER, THESE reasons haven't always cooked with the coalitions. For example, earlier this year the Grocery Manufacturers Association of America joined several groups in a public relations plan to oppose ethanol for what it said was the increasing food costs. These groups included various cattlemen's associations, hunger prevention organizations and environmentalists. While they were wrong, they were still successful.

If there is any countering to the attack on ethanol, a Harvard professor recently said that platforms in many cases reflect the party's interests, but the documents are not followed or paid attention to by party regulars.

We are not sure this is a cure all for one of South Dakota¹s greatest industries. South Dakota Republicans, especially its leadership, should send a much stronger objection to their national organization because the future of ethanol could be put into question by what has taken place in St. Paul.....


Gordon Garnos was long-time editor of the Watertown Public Opinion and recently retired after 39 years with that newspaper. Garnos, a lifelong resident of South Dakota except for his military service in the U.S. Air Force, was born and raised in Presho.