Political Quotes

“I thank the Senator. Although the tea party is in the State of Hawaii, they are not as strong there as they are in other places across the country. We do have a strong strain of conservatives across the State of Hawaii who want to get off the grid or at least want to participate in the clean-energy economy, and it has to do with the very simple fact that we pay 38 cents a kilowatt hour for the privilege of burning low-sulfur oil for electricity. That is not a left-right issue. That is a ``this makes no sense'' issue. We are one of the very few States where we have a good bipartisan consensus. We have been moving forward with our clean-energy initiative previously under a Republican Governor with the participation of the Republicans in our legislature, with our Chamber of Commerce, with our business roundtable, with our tourism industry, with our Department of Defense. It is exactly what the Senator from Rhode Island has been talking about. It is about doing what makes sense rather than subscribing to any particular political ideology.”