Standing at Roosevelt Point on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and looking out at the nation’s most exquisite and indescribable natural wonder, it’s impossible not to admire the man who made it possible. President Theodore Roosevelt saw America in a way no previous leader had ever looked at it, and a precious few have looked at it since then. And you can’t help but wonder how Roosevelt’s proud, trust-busting, conservationist Republican Party can have decayed into today’s reactionary remnant that sees global climate change as a Communist plot.

In January 1908, Roosevelt had the courage and foresight to declare the Grand Canyon a national monument, sidestepping a do-nothing Congress and placing conservation and the environment onto the American agenda. “Let this great wonder of nature remain as it now is,” Roosevelt said. “You cannot improve on it. But what you can do is keep it for your children, your children’s children, and all who come after you...”

Keep it for your children’s children, and all who come after you. That sentiment in no small part won him a rightful place on Mount Rushmore alongside presidential giants who came before him. But now, Teddy must be turning over in his grave. And weeping at what his once bold and progressive party espouses today.

Republicans have led the attack on the environment for a generation now. Mocking endangered species, undermining air quality standards, eviscerating environmental regulations whenever they can. Instead of Roosevelt, today’s Republican idol is Ronald Reagan, who balked at saving the majestic California redwood trees in the state he governed, famously remarking, “If you’ve seen one redwood tree, you’ve seen them all.”

How proud Teddy would be.

Or take our would-have-been vice president and wanna-be president, Sarah Palin, who thinks that pouring millions of tons of pollutants into the air and ocean has no effect on global warming.

This, as her home state of Alaska’s ice pack melts out from underneath its polar bears.

How proud Teddy would be.

And the late, unlamented Bush administration’s relentless efforts to eliminate or water down every reference to manmade climate change in every government report and study it could get its grimy hands on.

How proud Teddy would be.

It’s inexplicably odd and sad that a movement that calls itself conservative has turned its back on conservation of the nation’s environment, its beauty and its resources. Doubly odd in that conservation was once looked at with skepticism by the left, which saw it as a plot to undermine industrial progress and the jobs that came with it.

Now, as they have in so many ways, Republicans have turned their backs on Teddy Roosevelt and everything he stood for, placing the party squarely on the wrong side of history.

If the United States is to have a healthy two-party system, it needs those Teddy Roosevelt Republicans to stand up and take back control of their party.

Where are you?

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