Hewitt will get to share his boycott message with “the largest gathering of free-market, pro-capitalism, pro-defense, pro-liberty activists” in the state Friday night as Bob Schaffer’s conservative boot camp, the Leadership Program of the Rockies, graduates its latest class of future leaders Friday night at The Wildlife Experience in Parker.

A veritable who’s who of Colorado conservatives have passed through the 20-year-old training program, which changed its name from the Republican Leadership Program four years ago.

Republican Tom Lucero, one of a host of candidates hoping to take on Democrat Betsy Markey in the 4th Congressional District, sits down with Hewitt and some supporters for a $100-a-plate lunch at Maggiano’s Little Italy in downtown Denver.

It could be an uncomfortable meal. Lucero, who counts Hewitt at the top of his list of advisors, told Fort Collins Coloradoan editor Bob Moore earlier this week he disagrees with Hewitt’s conclusion that what’s good for General Motors is bad for the country. While he shares Hewitt’s concern about the federal government’s role in the iconic automobile company, Moore writes in his blog, “Lucero thinks it’s important for American businesses to succeed, so he draws the line at a boycott.”

“In order for those companies to succeed, Americans are going to have to do business with those companies,” he said.

Distancing himself from Hewitt on the boycott call probably is good politics for Lucero. The 4th Congressional District is home to more than a dozen GM dealerships employing hundreds – people who would be deeply impacted by a boycott.

As the Hewitt fundraiser was set to start at 11 a.m. Friday, only two guests — Lucero and his wife — had confirmed they’d be attending on the event’s Facebook page, but it must be said Lucero’s supporters are still grappling with “a Tweeter” and not all are yet “on a computer at this point.”

As for Hewitt’s plan to boycott GM, echoed by fellow conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh? The Detroit News got this reaction:

“While it’s not surprising that Rush Limbaugh would root for the failure of a national institution for partisan political gain, it is surprising that the other so-called leaders of the Republican party are silently going along with him given how many hard working Americans rely on GM for a living,” said [Democratic National Committee] spokesman Hari Sevugan.

And liberal MSNBC talker Ed Schultz asks, “Conservatives, are you out of your mind?”

What do you say we just kick the American worker in the teeth. What do you say we just give all the money to Wall Street. Let’s just take their health care, let’s take their education, let’s take their jobs. Let’s just genuflect to the Hugh Hewitts of the world.

Let’s watch:

How many more Greeleys should we expect to see in the next few months? According to the influential Baseline Scenario bloggers, it depends on who wins in the great and mostly unreported battle that’s waging between the Finance Industry and the American People.

Baseline blogger James Kwak provides this insight based on a reading of today’s New York Times:

For a snapshot of what’s wrong with our banking policy, look at the front page of the business section of today’s New York Times. On the left side: “U.S. in Standoff with Banks over Chrysler.” On the right side: “Banks Show Clout on Legislation to Help Consumers.”

On the left side, a consortium of banks holding Chrysler debt is refusing to agree to the current restructuring plan, which involves bondholders holding $6.9 billion in secured debt getting about 15 cents on the dollar – roughly where the bonds are currently trading, according to the Times… The banks are playing the ongoing game of chicken with the government, betting that the government will cave and give them a better deal rather than take a risk on a bankruptcy.

On the right side, the banks are using their lobbying clout to block the administration’s proposals to help consumers and households, including the mortgage cram-down provision (which would allow bankruptcy courts to modify mortgages on first homes) and added consumer protections for credit card customers.They currently have all 41 Republican votes in the Senate tied up, which means nothing can pass.

Here’s more on the battle to scuttle the cram-down plan to help consumers.

Meantime, top-dog Baseline blogger Simon Johnson in a piece at NYTimes.com presses the case again for greater action now on the propped-up banks. Show them who’s boss, dammit! he says. Shout the truth and take action accordingly: Declare the big guys bankrupt and restructure them, ASAP. As usual, he makes a powerful case.

(Photo/ilmungo, Flickr)

The chief boosters of the idea are not Washington policymakers. Instead, they are some of the nation’s top economists, environmentalists and newspaper editorial boards.

Here’s their argument: Hiking the federal gas tax, which hasn’t changed in 15 years, would not only encourage consumers to drive less and buy higher-mileage cars — thus reducing pollution and slowing climate change — it would also nudge Detroit’s automakers to produce the vehicles, thereby making them more competitive.

Despite the recession, proponents say the time is right for Congress to hike the 18.4-cent federal tax because fuel prices are lower — at a national average of $1.68 a gallon for regular gas — than they’ve been in months. If lawmakers don’t act, they worry, consumers might again be tempted to buy — and automakers produce — the gas guzzlers that largely contributed to the industry’s current economic troubles.

“Let’s not let lower oil prices permanently filter through to consumers,” Robert J. Samuelson, long-time business columnist at the Washington Post, wrote recently. “We’ve seen this movie before.”

Gas prices have been on a roller coaster this year. They skyrocketed over the summer, peaking in July when the national average hit $4.11 a gallon. Consumers fled the large-vehicle market in favor of smaller, higher-mileage cars. Unsold trucks and SUVs, which had been so popular for a decade, started filling up dealers’ lots.

Falling gas prices could change all that, and the Big Three automakers might start churning out SUVs again if consumer demand for them picks up.

“If the price of gasoline sinks and stays at a buck and a half a gallon,” Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland, told the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming this week, “all of a sudden those big pickup trucks start looking good again and [the automakers] can make a lot of money.”

Morici did not respond to requests for comment about raising the gas tax.

The federal gas tax hike was last raised in 1993, and it wasn’t easy. No Republicans supported the per-gallon increase of 4.3 cents, one of the revenue raisers that President Bill Clinton pushed as a way to balance the budget. The bill passed only after Vice President Al Gore voted yes to break a tie in the Senate.

Ian Parry, an economist at Resources for the Future, said today’s gas taxes, federal and state, add an average of 40 cents to the cost of a gallon of gasoline. The levies “don’t reflect the societal costs of driving,” Parry says, because the expenses associated with congestion, pollution and accidents are simply ignored. “Regardless of the price of oil,” he said, “these externalities are not considered [in the tax].” Parry suggested a combined state and federal tax of at least $1 to make up the difference.

A hike in the gas tax faces a big obstacle. Appearing on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, President-elect Barack Obama rejected the idea because the middle of a recession is no time to take more money out of consumers’ pockets.

“Yes, gas prices have gone down,” Obama said. “But, in the meantime, maybe somebody in the family has lost their job. In the meantime, their housing values have plummeted. In the meantime, maybe their hours [at work] have been cut back. Or if they’re a small-business owner, their sales have gone down 50, 60, 70 percent. So putting additional burdens on American families right now, I think, is a mistake.”

Supporters of the new tax, however, say there are ways to lighten the burden. Samuelson, for example, suggested a one-penny increase per month spread over the next 48 months. That would allow consumers to take advantage of lower gas prices during the economic downturn, “but they’d also be on notice that prices won’t permanently stay down.”

Beside Samuelson, economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has called for higher gas taxes. And this week, editorials in the Washington Post and the Christian Science Monitor urged Congress to raise the levy.

The debate arrives as Congress haggles over legislation to rescue Detroit’s automakers from potential bankruptcy. Some lawmakers wanted new fuel-efficiency standards to be a condition of the bailout, but that idea didn’t survive initial negotiations.

Nor did language, backed by Democrats, that would have prevented automakers from using bailout money to join lawsuits against states proposing tighter restrictions on tailpipe emissions. The provision was cut from the final version of the House bill after the White House balked.

Most Republicans oppose states’ efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions because they would impose an undue burden on the automakers at a time when they can least afford it. “That flies in the face of logic under the circumstances,” Alabama Rep. Spencer Bachus, the highest-ranking Republican on the Financial Services Committee, said Wednesday.

Given the political environment, supporters of a higher gas tax say there’s little wonder the idea hasn’t gone anywhere. “It’s smart policy,” said Daniel Becker, head of the Safe Climate Campaign. “It’s not great politics right now.”

Even some Democrats with long records of backing stiffer fuel-economy standards oppose raising the gas tax. Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who chairs the House committee on energy indepence and global warming, had proposed this week that the Detroit bailout include new emission standards proposed by many states. Markey sponsored the law, passed last December, that increased mileage standards, called CAFE, from 25 to 35 miles a gallon by 2020.

Markey spokesman Jeff Sharp said that the Massachusetts congressman thinks that higher mileage standards — not a higher gas tax — “is the best direction” to go.

“Better fuel economy will lower consumption regardless of the price of gas,” Sharp wrote in an email, “and put more people to work building the green cars of the future.”

Yet a 2004 report from the Congressional Budget Office found that a 46-cent increase in the federal gas tax would cut fuel use faster than increasing CAFE rules. “A gasoline tax is a good policy to compare with CAFE standards because it is the most direct way to reduce gasoline consumption,” the report stated.

Gilbert E. Metcalf, an economist at Tufts University, thinks an incremental tax on oil, when prices range between $40 and $120 a barrel, would do more to cut the country’s overall reliance on oil than a higher gas tax. (At $40 a barrel, the tax would be $40, while at $120, it would be zero.) Metcalf says such a taxation system would send “the right price signal” to encourage Detroit’s automakers to make high-mileage cars.

This woud be preferrable to a gas tax hike because “30 percent of oil is used for non-transport purposes,” Metcalf wrote in an email. “It keeps the focus on our desire to reduce oil consumption.

Whatever the plan, it will have to wait until at least next year. While the House on Wednesday passed its Detroit bailout bill, which would provide $14 billion in emergency “bridge loans” to Chrysler and General Motors. Ford says it has enough cash to survive 2009, unless the economy tanks further.) The Senate Republican opposition killed the bailout forcing the White House to pull the automakers into the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Plan, known as TARP — the hastily created fund to prop up failing banks and financial institutions.

Meanwhile, gas tax supporters are under no illusions about their minority status. “There’s not a very long line [of gas-tax proponents],” said Becker, of the Safe Climate Campaign. “We could meet in a phone booth.”

Where it gets interesting is the apparent correlation between partisan vote splitting and which special interest group supports said lawmaker.

The government transparency group, Maplight.org, posted a nifty list of the Big 3 bailout votes with details on each lawmakers’ industry contributors.

Those who got the bulk of their campaign cash from auto-related unions voted for H.R. 7321 – the Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act. Those who either didn’t support the bill (or in Tancredo’s case didn’t cast a vote) were the beneficiaries of support from car dealers. Yet, both interest groups are depending on the cash infusion into GM, Ford and Chrysler for their very livelihoods — a rare occasion when labor and business actually agree especially in as contentious an environment as auto manufacturing.