You may recall that majority Republicans in the state Senate announced last month they were creating a select legislative committee to discuss energy and environmental issues, to be chaired by the GOP’s West Slope point man on energy, Sen. Ray Scott of Grand Junction. As we reported at the time, incoming Senate President Kevin Grantham, R-Cañon City, sketched out the committee’s mission like this:

“The select committee will augment and enhance our ability to look at these issues in a broader way, and at greater depth. It’s also a reflection of the primary importance Senate Republicans place on these issues, which hold the key to Colorado’s economic and environmental well-being.”

Today, the other shoe dropped; the Colorado Springs Gazette published a commentary by Scott on its op-ed page accusing the Democratic Party of abandoning its traditional working-class constituency when it comes to energy issues.

The underlying theme of Scott’s piece is a by-now-familar GOP talking point nationwide in the wake of Donald Trump’s upset victory Nov. 8: that the Democratic Party’s approach to energy policy is elitist while the Republican energy agenda is a better fit for the working class. And it looks like that point will be made (often) not only in Congress but also in Colorado’s very own General Assembly, with Scott and the committee taking the lead:

Democrats posture as defenders of the working class, but many in the working class no longer feel that way, judging from the election results. And it’s not hard to see why. Working-class Democrats have good reason to be wary, given how often they’ve been thrown under the bus, or treated as “acceptable losses,” when the party goes to war against “warming.” The pattern of indifference to the climate crusade’s human costs became too obvious to ignore during the Obama years, pushing these folks into Republican ranks.

…Democrats launched a three-pronged attack on coal communities, using vilification, litigation and regulation to destroy the market for the abundant and affordable fuel source they produce. In another pander to the climate lobby-which now takes the outlandish position that all carbon fuels should be “left in the ground”-the president derailed two major pipeline projects (Keystone XL and Dakota Access) that could have put a lot of tradesman, truckers, manufacturers and suppliers to work, while clearing energy market bottlenecks.

So, the battle lines are drawn: Republicans will say the energy debate is about jobs. Democrats will counter that it’s about climate change and the environment-the tack taken by Senate Democratic leader Lucia Guzman, of Denver, in our November report on the new GOP committee:

“We know what the majority of people in Colorado want,” Guzman said. “They want to keep their public lands, they want to have clean air and most people in Colorado support action toward diminishing climate change.”

Republicans, by the way, have a good case in point reinforcing their argument: Historically Democratic Pueblo County-once celebrated as the Steel City, whose workers embraced organized labor-voted narrowly for Trump on Election Day.

In any event, today’s column by Scott certainly seems to answer a question raised by Guzman in our November report:

“I’m not sure what the Republicans have in mind when they’re setting up this committee.”

It’s a bit clearer, now.