I’ll admit, I’m not as heartened as I should be to hear that cap and trade is dead, and that’s because the man delivering that message is Lindsey Graham, who proposes that Congress instead pass a grab-bag of subsidies for useless renewable energy projects. Graham’s been trying to broker this deal for a long time now, most recently as a member of the Gang of Ten senators that nearly derailed the GOP’s victorious push to force Congress to let the ban on offshore drilling expire in the fall of 2008.

President Obama restored the ban via executive order shortly after taking office, partially so he could continue to use it as bait to win Republican votes for projects like the ones Graham is talking about. I wrote about why this would be a raw deal for conservatives in the October 20, 2008 issue of NR. And if Graham is talking about shearing the cap-and-trade provisions from the Waxman-Markey bill and passing everything else into law, well, Kevin Williamson and I wrote an article last year on the 50 worst things about Waxman-Markey. The cap-and-trade provisions accounted for only 12 items on our list.