Conservatives See No Problems

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones has a pretty good post about conservative's inability to admit a problem exists. That's why they lack ideas about how to fix problems - they don't see or can't admit a problem exists to begin with.

Take global warming. Here's the rough conservative reaction to it starting in the early 90s:

1. It doesn't exist.

2. It exists but it isn't manmade.

3. It's manmade, but it's too expensive to do anything about.

Even this is a generous assessment. A lot of conservatives are still stuck at #2, and sizeable chunk at #1. What this means is that they're basically shut out of the conversation entirely. Which is too bad, because I'd actually be sort of interested to hear a conservative take on how to address global warming that accepts both its reality and the necessity of doing something about it.

But maybe this isn't right. Maybe it's just that these people who claim to be conservative are no longer true conservatives. I seem to remember a time when conservatives had solutions to problems besides "cut taxes".