The Rollback Republicans Are Just Biding Their Time : The kinder, gentler environmental image more than likely will evaporate after the November election.

The environment, once thought to be a sleeper electoral issue, has become an unexpected “third rail” for the Republican Party. In 1995, fresh from their electoral triumph, congressional Republicans launched a serious assault against national environmental protection laws. But their attack succeeded only in causing a backlash in public opinion, and now GOP leaders are urging a kinder, gentler environmental image until after November. Repackaging this monster, they will find, will be a hard sell.

Although Speaker Newt Gingrich’s “contract with America” did not mention the environment, if enacted it would have undermined or eliminated basic laws that protect against air pollution, water pollution, toxic waste and public lands abuse.

The party’s environmental agenda was exposed in bruising battles over funding and in the attempt to rewrite the Endangered Species Act. The polls showed the public’s strong disapproval, and Gingrich and private sector leaders sounded the alarm.

Gingrich formed a task force to restore the environmental image of his party, which he claimed was being distorted by his opponents. Republican pollster Frank Luntz, rather than suggest that the GOP environmental agenda was a mistake, wrote a memo last fall urging Republican members of Congress to counter criticism by supporting local environmental efforts like tree plantings and beach cleanups. And in the primaries, none of the candidates are publicly advocating rolling back any environmental protection laws as they chase votes less than a year after many of them supported the radical antienvironment agenda in Congress.

But thanks to antienvironmentalists in the Republican Party who are resisting any efforts at moderation, the public should have no trouble discerning which GOP environmental image to believe. Influential legislators like Resources Committee Chairman Don Young of Alaska, who calls environmentalists “a self-centered bunch, a waffle-stomping, Harvard-graduating, intellectual bunch of idiots [pursuing] a socialist agenda,” have waited decades to loosen laws on mining, water, air quality, timber and industrial pollution.

Indeed, some Republicans are becoming even more brazen in their confrontational approach to the environment. Consider these recent examples:

Rep. Richard Pombo, a Northern California cattle rancher who is leading the assault on the Endangered Species Act, dismissed findings by Republican pollsters and asserted that the public supports conservatives’ efforts to weaken laws like the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Rules Committee Chairman Gerald Solomon recommended that a fellow New York legislator who favored tougher penalties against General Electric for massive pollution “ought to be horsewhipped and run out of the state.”

And Rep. Tom Coburn, a physician from Oklahoma, argues that the water pollutant cryptosporidium, which caused 104 deaths and poisoned 400,000 people in Wisconsin in 1993, can “be very helpful because it helps us identify those people who, in fact, are immuno-compromised.” Yes, one observer noted, and bullets can help identify hemophiliacs.

Few of the Republican initiatives are likely to be enacted in 1996, given strong resistance in the Senate, growing support for the environment within the Clinton administration and continued concern by moderate Republican legislators. But no one should underestimate the intent and desire of key Republican lawmakers in positions of power to weaken environmental policies. They merely have recognized the high political risk in this election season of an agenda they designed when more confident of their votes and are hoping to renew that agenda with a Republican president and Congress in 1997.