Denial -- of What?

A New York Times editorial laments the fact that none of the Republican Senate candidates accept what it calls the scientific consensus that the world's climate is warming due to human activity.

The candidates are not simply rejecting solutions, like putting a price on carbon, though these, too, are demonized. They are re-running the strategy of denial perfected by Mr. Cheney a decade ago, repudiating years of peer-reviewed findings about global warming and creating an alternative reality in which climate change is a hoax or conspiracy.

What's really lamentable here is left unmentioned by the article as well as by both "sides" of this "debate:" the fact that the GOP is in worse-than-denial about the founding principles of our country and the proper purpose of government. Both forbid any of the alleged Big Brother "solutions" to such a problem as global warming. There is not one mention in the article -- nor have I any recollection -- of any Republican politician making a stand like, "I don't give a damn what the science says: It still wouldn't make 'cap and trade' fuel rationing the right thing to do -- or a part of my job!"

Instead, even if the GOP gives the Democrats the shellacking they deserve this November, we are at the mercy of whether a GOP Congress believes that man-made global warming is real, and whether it sees similar legislation of its own as desirable in some expedient sense.

People warn of complacency setting in before the elections, but the far bigger danger is letting it set in after. Too many in the GOP who even know that political principles exist are in denial about their nature and importance.

-- CAV