Dafydd at Big Lizards has identified the greatest weakness of the conservative movement, the one that cripples them in debates over some of today's biggest issues (emphasis in original):
… What do all these contemporary issues hold in common?
- Cap and Trade — rather, Cripple and Tax
- The expansion of nuclear power generation
- The EPA's attempt to outlaw CO2 (and now NO2 as well; hat tip to Hugh Hewitt)
- Missile defense, both theater and strategic
- Nationalization of major industries
- Nationalization of health care to a single-payer, government-controlled system
- The promiscuous proliferation of "endangered species" that are, in fact, not endangered
First, each of these controversies is a wedge issue by which Republicans and conservatives can oust Democrats and liberals from Congress — and potentially from la Casa Blanca, as well.
Second, each is fundamentally a scientific question, from climate science, to nuclear physics, to aeronautics and cybernetics, to the optimal pursuit of medical research, to economic science, to the biological sciences.
And most important, for each of these wedge issues, the Right can only win if it is more credible when speaking about scientific matters.
It's not good enough merely to be no less credible than, on a par with the Left — in this case, a "tie" in rationalism goes to whoever is best at slinging emotional arguments; and in that arena, the Left always has the home-field advantage.
All of which leads me, by a commodious vicus of recirculation, back to the hubris-flaw of conservatives; and that is, of course, the squirrely refusal of so many prominent conservatives to accept the findings of a century and a half of evolutionary biology.
Read the whole thing.