Greg Sargent:

The data show that Republicans are increasingly isolated in their denial of global warming: The largest percentage of GOPers yet in Ipsos’ polling says it isn’t happening, and the rise in their denial is far more pronounced than among Dems or independents.

The poll asked whether people believe that the world’s temperature “has been going up slowly over the past 100 years.” A surprisingly large percentage of Republicans, 43%, say it isn’t happening, versus only 23% of independents and 16% of Dems. Meawhile, only 57% of Republicans say it’s happening, versus 68% of independents and 82% of Dems.

An Ipsos official confirms that this is the lowest percentage yet of Republicans who say it is happening, and that their skepticism is rising at a much more pronounced rate than among Dems or indys.

Here are the poll’s results:

act_dsp_pdf.cfm –

A WaPo-ABC poll last month had similar findings:

Since its peak 3 1/2 years ago, belief that climate change is happening is down sharply among Republicans — 76 to 54 percent — and independents — 86 to 71 percent. It dipped more modestly among Democrats, from 92 to 86 percent. A majority of respondents still support legislation to cap emissions and trade pollution allowances, by 53 to 42 percent.

Polls like these, and a competitive primary challenge from the right, may conspire to take away Senator McCain’s vote on climate legislation this spring. Meanwhile, it looks increasingly likely that Republicans will nominate a climate change denier for President in 2012.

Lots of folks have taken note of new polling today showing John McCain potentially in trouble in next year’s Arizona Republican primary for his Senate seat.

Matt Yglesias flags an important aspect of this:

This seems like pretty much terrible news for the world. The most likely path between Point A and Senate passage of a reasonable climate bill is for McCain to rediscover his interest in the issue. But that’s not the sort of thing a Senator worried about a right-wing primary challenge is likely to do.

This is exactly right. And of course, a Politico story (where else?) provides the evidence:

Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman have been working overtime to craft a climate bill that can attract significant GOP support. But they aren’t exactly scoring points with their mutual best friend in the Senate, John McCain. “Their start has been horrendous,” McCain said Thursday. “Obviously, they’re going nowhere.”

This should not be a surprise for anyone who has been paying attention to McCain’s statements on climate legislation since last year’s election.

Steve Benen checked in with a McCain spokesperson on this and got an absurd response:

Asked for an explanation, McCain spokesperson Brooke Buchanan said, “This really hasn’t been done in a bipartisan fashion.”

I see. The climate bill is being pushed by a Dem (Kerry), a Republican (Graham), and an Independent (Lieberman), but the problem is that the effort is too partisan. Follow-up question for Brooke Buchanan: “Huh?”

Predictably, arbiter of conservative-leaning beltway conventional wisdom Chuck Todd blames President Obama for not reaching out enough.

There is a larger point to all of this though. Primary challenges are an extremely effective way to hold ‘moderate’ Members of Congress to the party line. Probably the single most effective way to do so, I’d say.

Arlen Specter is a great example of this (full disclosure: I can’t stand Arlen Specter):

Specter’s overall party loyalty score since becoming a Democrat — counting votes both before and after the primary challenge — is 87 percent. This contrasts with the 44 percent of the time that he broke ranks to side with the Democratic on Contentious Votes while still a member of the Republican Party. He’s basically been behaving like a mainline, liberal Democrat.

On the other hand, it’s hard not to imagine that this process has been strengthened, accentuated, catalyzed, by Joe Sestak’s primary challenge. You can draw a pretty clear line in the sand from when Specter went from sorta, kinda Democrat to OMG totally! Democrat, and it coincides with the date that Sestak announced his challenge.

Continuing this trend, Specter called for an exit strategy in Afghanistan just yesterday.

This chart couldn’t make the Specter example any clearer:

The obvious lesson here is that Democrats should mount aggressive primary challenges against Democrats who are getting in the way of healthcare reform, clean energy legislation, the employee free choice act and job-creating stimulus provisions. Defenders of the status quo will maintain that this tactic is more effective in places like Pennsylvania than it would be in places like Nebraska, Arkansas, Indiana or Louisiana, and they are probably right. But the way we deal with such Senators now doesn’t seem to be working very well, so I’d be more than willing to give this other strategy a shot.

Transcript from ABC’s This Week:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You’ve also pledged to help – to work with the president on preserving our national parks. You’re here with Secretary Salazar. And one of the things you’re having a hearing on this weekend is the threat of climate change to our national parks.

I was in Glacier National Park a couple years ago with Governor Schweitzer. You talked about the problem there. Glaciers just evaporating, could be completely gone by 2025, 2035. What’s the threat here?

MCCAIN: I think the threat is serious here. We’ve seen increased temperatures, which has had impact on the wildlife, on the flora and fauna, on the Colorado River itself, which we are seeing less and less of.

We are in serious drought conditions, our parks have very fragile ecology here and, frankly, when you’re in this driest area anyway, then they’re even more fragile.

So I think that part of the impact of climate change on our national parks is – well, you know, they’re going to have to change the name of Glacier National Park because the glaciers are going away.

STEPHANOPOULOS: In the past, you’ve been supportive of legislation to deal with greenhouse gas emissions, cap and trade. What about the current legislation that’s coming out of the House now, moving to the Senate? They’ve met a lot of your objections about not giving away the allowances. Is this something that you can support?

MCCAIN: Well, to support a 1,400 page piece of legislation to start with is always difficult for me, but I believe that the only way we’re going to truly reduce greenhouse gas emissions effectively is through nuclear power.

We have got to build 100 nuclear power plants in the next 20 years. We can do that. Right now, the administration’s position is against storage and they’re against recycling of spent nuclear fuel. I can’t support a genuine reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, unless nuclear power is a key part of it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you’ve been for it in past.

MCCAIN: I’ve been for – and nuclear – assuming that nuclear power would be a key part of it. I mean, you can’t get there from here. The only country that’s really making its Kyoto goals is France, where 80 percent of their electricity is generated by nuclear power.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you’d be willing to go along with cap and trade, if it were part of a comprehensive deal that included more …

MCCAIN: Well, that would have to be part of it. And second of all, in any 1,400 page piece of legislation, you put in a lot of special deals for a lot of special interests. We know what happened there. The bazaar was open in the House of Representatives, so obviously I would have to want to do away with a whole lot of that.

But I think climate change is real and I would be glad to sit down and try to work, as I have in the past, across the aisle on this issue. Senator Lieberman is great on this issue…

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Kerry is putting a group together as well; have you been part of that?

MCCAIN: I have not yet, no.

And right now he is facing a primary challenge from the far-right. Understandably, he’s feeling a bit, um, Mavericky on climate legislation these days:

“The budget the president recently put forward undermines our ability to work in a bipartisan fashion on this issue,” said McCain. “The president and his administration have risked our country’s economic future with a tax, borrow, and spend policy of historic proportions.”

“What the Obama administration has proposed is not cap-and-trade,” he continued. “It’s cap-and-tax.”

McCain’s main concern is that Obama calls for all of the emission credits in his cap-and-trade plan to be auctioned off to polluters, rather than dispersed free of cost. The Obama plan would bring in tens of billions a year in revenues from auctioning credits, the majority of which would be returned to citizens through tax rebates. It would also dedicate $15 billion per year to energy investments.

Yes, you read that right. John McCain only supports cap and trade legislation if it is structured to funnel money to polluting industries. Thanks but no thanks, Senator.