As noted in DemFromCT's diary Do You Believe in Evolution, the Republican Party is having second thoughts about their patron saint Ronald Reagan's alliance with the radical religionists who use carefully selected Biblical quotes to justify their anti-Christian hate (Kristians and KK_Kristians). However, it's broader than that - the New York Times now reports that some Republicans feel that if Social Darwinism is a core Republican value, Darwin's actual theory of evolution must be a Republican value as well.
This goes to a central contradiction of Kristian (as opposed to Christian) doctrine: If God loves capitalism and free market competition, why do the Kristians insist that God runs the Universe via Marxist-style central planning? After all, having the Big Guy carefully design each species in accordance with a central plan dictated by the Leader is kind of a Communist approach, isn't it? If God's a free-market kind of dude, wouldn't the universe be run on a more competitive basis?
Now that Big W has run the country into the ground, the "true conservatives" are looking for a way to cast off the Kristians who provided Reagan with grassroots support but are now losing them elections:
For some conservatives, accepting Darwin undercuts religious faith and produces an amoral, materialistic worldview that easily embraces abortion, embryonic stem cell research and other practices they abhor. As an alternative to Darwin, many advocate intelligent design, which holds that life is so intricately organized that only an intelligent power could have created it.
Yet it is that very embrace of intelligent design — not to mention creationism, which takes a literal view of the Bible’s Book of Genesis — that has led conservative opponents to speak out for fear their ideology will be branded as out of touch and anti-science.
Some of these thinkers have gone one step further, arguing that Darwin’s scientific theories about the evolution of species can be applied to today’s patterns of human behavior, and that natural selection can provide support for many bedrock conservative ideas, like traditional social roles for men and women, free-market capitalism and governmental checks and balances.
(Source: New York Times, A Split Emerges as Conservatives Discuss Darwin, May 5, 2007 [emphasis added])
Yes, the party of Social Darwinism as a model for governing have started asking whether Biblical literalism fits that belief system. If God loves the USA, and the USA runs on competition and "survival of the fittest business" in the marketplace, why insist that God wouldn't use these same principles when running the universe? Besides, it's losing votes.
The breakdown of Reagan's unholy alliance between Wall Street money and Pat Robertson's followers is well under way.The glue of the old alliance was that the CEO wing of the Republicans had money, but no grassrotts support - while the Kristians had followers but needed funding. Now that the Mega-Churches have become money machines and the CEO Wing has Rupert Murdoch running the news, the marriage of convenience is heading toward divorce.
It's going to be very interesting to see whether the Taliban wing of the Republican Party survives this election cycle, splits off to form their own Party - or kicks out the CEO Wing and takes it over completely. They are no longer the unsophisticated fanatics of the 1980s - these folks are a frightening combination of blindly loyal followers and manipulative leaders.