Republicans Against Science

Op-Ed Columnist
Republicans Against Science
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 28, 2011


Jon Huntsman Jr., a former Utah governor and ambassador to China, isn’t a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. And that’s too bad, because Mr. Hunstman has been willing to say the unsayable about the G.O.P. — namely, that it is becoming the “anti-science party.” This is an enormously important development. And it should terrify us.

To see what Mr. Huntsman means, consider recent statements by the two men who actually are serious contenders for the G.O.P. nomination: Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.

Mr. Perry, the governor of Texas, recently made headlines by dismissing evolution as “just a theory,” one that has “got some gaps in it” — an observation that will come as news to the vast majority of biologists. But what really got peoples’ attention was what he said about climate change: “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.”

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Now, we don’t know who will win next year’s presidential election. But the odds are that one of these years the world’s greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge. And, in a time of severe challenges — environmental, economic, and more — that’s a terrifying prospect.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/opinion/republicans-against-science.html?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto

I find that your focus could be improved in one particular.

Its not just--or even primarily about who is President.

The legislative branch of government is at least equally important. Republican control of the House of Representatives is scary for the same reasons.

The Senate hangs by a thread, and the Republicans are busy trying to out do each other in campaigning against science, and against the policies that applied science would support.

Something about America one day electing a downright moron? And you thought the 2000 election was the low point....

And it is wrong."

imagine the survival chances of a creature that deliberately cuts itself off from accurate sensory awareness of its environment and bases its behavior on a falsified model of how things work.

It is becoming less and less of a stretch to view Republicans as crazy.