Not content with cuts, perennial Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is now calling for the complete elimination of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Gingrich made the call at the Conservative Political Action Conference as he pandered to the Tea Party in a play for votes in the CPAC straw poll. It didn’t work – Ron Paul won the poll, and Ginrich finished 5th, behind former Governor Gary Johnson of New Mexico (who!?!).

Republicans have been threatening – and attempting – everything from rolling back the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases to slashing the EPA budget to prevent it from enforcing the Clean Air act. But this is the first time a mainstream Republican official has actually called for the agency’s elimination in such a high-profile setting.

The EPA was created in 1970 by then-President Richard Nixon, a Republican.

According to The Hill blog,

Gingrich called for replacing the EPA with an Environmental Solutions Agency that focuses on technology-driven solutions to addressing the country’s environmental problems. Gingrich said the Obama EPA is “made up of self-selected bureaucrats” that are seeking to pass wide-ranging regulations that would harm the economy. Instead, he called for an agency that focused on “science, technology, markets and incentives.”

Even uber-Libertarian Rand Paul (R-KY) doesn’t go that far. His ambitious plan to cut $500 billion from the Federal budget only proposed cutting the EPA’s budget by one quarter. Paul said he doesn’t like the agency’s approach, but has no problem with its mission.

“I’m not for pollution,” Paul said during a brief interview in the Capitol. “There are rules we should have.”

Gingrich also called for increased offshore drilling, no regulation on fracking, and no restrictions on coal mines, like the one in West Virginia the EPA recently ruled couldn’t move ahead with its plan to destroy watersheds and water supplies.

And nobody pointed out that this would leave America looking like Mordor, and ultimately kill thousands of jobs (except in the toxic cleanup business).

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