Called Anti-Science, Rightbloggers Reply That Science is a Liberal Plot

By Roy Edroso
The Village Voice
Mon., Sep. 5 2011

With the ascension of Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and other GOP candidates who don't cotton to this evolution or climate change stuff, people have begun to ask if Republicans and conservatives are actually becoming hostile to science. It doesn't help that one of those people is Republican Presidential candidate John Huntsman.

Rightbloggers leapt into this fray with a broad reinterpretation of the word "science" to mean whatever they wanted it to mean, which in most cases was "something liberals and scientists use to attack God and America."

A few weeks back Huntsman worried aloud that Republicans increasingly "find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position." He was seconded by such expected sources as Paul Krugman. But less ideologically-oriented publications jumped in as well: Last week the science magazine Discover, for example, wondered about "the increasingly antiscience Republican candidates."

Some people who are decidedly not liberals got nervous about it too. At libertarian magazine Reason, Steve Chapman wrote about "The Conservative Reversal on Science." Bernard Goldberg said this week, "Liberal Democrats may be nuts, but they're not nuts about this kind of thing. A conservative running for the GOP nomination for president may do quite well in Iowa believing in religious fairy tales - but it's not going to play well in other parts of the country, especially with independents who tend to be more moderate."

(More here.)