Matt Continetti has an interesting piece on John McCain and conservative discontent with the Republican presidential hopefuls in the New York Times this morning. It’s worth reading, but one line sticks out as problematic. In talking about why many conservatives react negatively to McCain, he writes:

Many refuse to accept the scientific consensus on global climate change and recoil at Senator McCain’s attempts to find a free-market solution to the problem.

But McCain’s proposal was not really a free-market solution–and no matter how you label it, it certainly wasn’t an effective solution. As Marlo Lewis wrote for NRO at the time, it was just a rehash of Kyoto. Whether or not you accept the so-called “scientific consensus” on global warming doesn’t even matter here. McCain’s proposal was simply bad policy.