William Murchison, at the American Spectator, is counting off Rick Perry's virtues as a low-tax, pro-growth Presidential candidate. One of Murchison's lines is that Perry won't regulate industry, especially with environmental restrictions.
Were Perry to become president, the Environmental Protection Agency could forget about lashing coal producers and automobile manufacturers to lofty standards for "pollution reduction."
I assume he's right about the facts, but what exactly is the point of putting the words 'pollution reduction' in scare quotes? Is it that he thinks that car exhaust or smoke from coal fires count as pollution in name only? Is it that he thinks that the EPA's standards don't reduce the pollution? For the life of me, I can't make out what exactly is being communicated with the quote marks. I'm assuming they are scarequotes – invoking the terms of the other side of the debate to call attention to the fact that they are wrong about some factual matter. But what is the matter, here?