People march from the U.S. Capitol to the White House for the People's Climate Movement protesting President Donald Trump's environmental policies on April 29, 2017. | Astrid Riecken/Getty Images 2020 elections Republicans could have a Green New Deal problem Polling suggests that the GOP risks turning off younger voters en masse by portraying the climate change plan as a socialist fantasy.

The GOP is seizing on the "Green New Deal" to demonize vulnerable Democrats in 2020 — but some Republicans warn it could do long-term damage to the party.

Though Republicans have ignored climate change in past elections, it’s now a key part of their 2020 strategy, especially in House races. They’re hoping to define the Green New Deal as an expensive socialist gambit dreamed up by liberal superstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that will ban cows and planes. Though mostly inaccurate, it's a portrayal they believe will scare independent voters in key districts.


But the move could come at a cost: The near- and long-term loss of millennials and Generation Z voters, a growing slice of the electorate that wants federal climate change action to a greater degree than their elders. A recent Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics survey found 74 percent of likely general election voters under 30 disapprove of President Donald Trump’s climate change performance and 50 percent call climate change “a crisis” that “demands urgent action.” Another 25 percent called it “a problem.”

The data has Republican pollsters and current and former lawmakers warning that relentless mocking of the Green New Deal — but more critically, President Donald Trump’s dismissal of climate change as a hoax — could jeopardize the GOP’s ability to capture and cement a congressional majority.

“The president’s comments on climate change are damaging because it gives an incentive for those who don’t place a high priority on the issue to go along with that,” said former Rep. Ryan Costello (R-Pa.). “For the Republican Party to be a majority party in 10 years and in 20 years there will have to be a clear set of climate solutions as policies proposed and voted on, and what that is remains to be seen.”

Costello, whose Pennsylvania district turned blue after he decided to retire last year, in part due to Trump, added that the GOP would be better off electorally presenting alternatives to Democrats’ “regulatorily driven” policies, “which are costly.”

“Mockery doesn’t get anybody anywhere,” said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), a top target for Democrats in 2020. “We should be offering solutions.”

But other polling conducted by the progressive firm Data for Progress revealed some weaknesses the GOP hopes to use to its advantage. Proposals to make all cars electric by 2030 and eliminate fossil fuel production by 2035 are unpopular.

Another factor in the mix of political calculations is that young voters have historically voted in lower numbers. At the same time their turnout ratio increased by 16 points in 2018, and there’s reason to believe that uptick will continue next year.

“There are a lot of areas where millennials are a bit more progressive than I wish they were,” Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson said at a January event that examined what the party could do to win back voters they lost in 2018, including suburban women. “Republicans need to do a better job of speaking to them.”

Still, House Republicans are wielding the Green New Deal, and by extension climate action, as a campaign cudgel. Vulnerable Democrats like Rep. Antonio Delgado of New York are already facing TV ads from the Congressional Leadership Fund PAC, casting the freshman as engaging in a “radical Green New Deal assault on the American economy.” Though Delgado appeared to initially support the plan on the campaign trail, he has not endorsed it and has since voiced opposition to the breadth of its proposals.

The plan’s non-climate components — it calls for a federal basic income and jobs guarantee, for example — is where Republicans see opportunity, according to pollsters. They’re aided, in part, by Fox News , which has saturated its airwaves with coverage of the Green New Deal, incorrectly claiming that Americans wouldn’t be allowed to have cars and airplanes and that hamburgers would be “outlawed.”

The ability of Republicans to define the Green New Deal as a socialist takeover of the economy could determine whether their attacks inflict real damage on Democrats in competitive districts. But if those attacks become conflated with climate change denialism, it could make the climb back to the majority harder for Republicans.

Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), who was defeated in 2018 by a Democrat in a South Florida district dealing with rising sea levels, echoed Costello’s warning.

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“The energy surrounding the Green New Deal means there are a lot of Americans that want to see Congress take bold action to lower emissions,” Curbelo said. "[Republicans] will alienate younger voters if they criticize without offering an alternative.”

Though Curbelo called the Green New Deal “disingenuous” and not a real bill, he cautioned his former colleagues that “if they want to return to the majority one day, it will likely mean they must have a good answer on environmental policies — something they've been lacking for decades."

A Democratic pollster who worked on competitive House races in 2018 said climate change is “top of mind” for voters under 40, whether they live in a coastal area or not.

But even Republicans who want to offer their own vision on climate face a huge obstacle — their own president.

Trump has ignored Pentagon warnings that climate change poses some of the gravest national security risks to the country, pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Climate accords. He has dismissed the findings of 13 federal government agencies, which concluded last year that global warming “presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy and the natural systems that support us."

And he’s mocked environmentalists and Democrats on Twitter when there’s unseasonably cold or snowy weather.

“I think he’s on the wrong side of the issue,” said Fitzpatrick, who was one of three Republicans who voted with Democrats Thursday to keep the U.S. in the Paris climate agreement.

“It’s important to talk about our environment and to engage those younger voters with regards to climate change,” said Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), a Trump ally who is being targeted by Democrats in 2020. “[But] in my district, people aren’t demanding an alternative to the Green New Deal.”

Other Republicans like Oklahoma Rep. Frank Lucas, the ranking member on the House Science Committee, sidestepped questions about the potential political damage Trump’s climate change positions could inflict on Republicans down ballot.

“The president has his own unique style,” said Lucas, who disagrees with the president on the issue but bashed the Green New Deal for invoking social justice as a selling point.

“If my friends on the other side ultimately get what they want they’ll probably choke on it politically the way they did health care in 2010,” he said. Democrats lost the House after passing the Affordable Care Act, but the law is now more popular than it's ever been, supported by 50 percent of the public.

Lacking a detailed policy of their own, Republicans have called generally for boosting innovation and energy conservation. GOP moderates often cite those goals, long part of the party’s lexicon on environmental matters.

“The president is the leading policymaker for better or for worse and this is not a priority of his administration,” said Rory Cooper, a former adviser to then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), now at Purple Strategies.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), like many of his Republican colleagues, wants to elevate clean energy research rather than pursue regulations or legislation that would assess fees on carbon pollution. Last month, he introduced a “Green Real Deal” proposal that calls climate change a national security threat and recommends spending more on federal research while removing permitting roadblocks for all energy infrastructure.

“History will judge harshly my Republican colleagues who deny the science of climate change,” Gaetz, a vocal Trump surrogate, said in April. “Similarly, those Democrats who would use climate change as a basis to regulate out of existence the American experience will face the harsh reality that their ideas will fail.”

At the same time, Gaetz supports abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency. As rising seas and temperatures endanger his Florida panhandle district, some question whether Gaetz has truly turned a corner on the issue.

Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) admitted the majority of the GOP has not shifted its views on combating the impacts of climate change despite dire predictions from international scientists that the world economy must be transformed to avoid catastrophic damage to the planet by 2040.

“The reality is probably not,” Stewart said. “It’s probably about where we’ve been the past few years.”