John McCain, via Twitter:
$2 million "for the promotion of astronomy" in Hawaii - because nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy
Clearly, McCain and the Republican Party's effort to divide America into "real" America and "other" America did not end with their defeat in 2008. He and his ilk, as well as their enablers in the media, want to continue that fight in 2009.
Moreover, they want to combine it with their anti-science agenda. Average Americans, it seems, do not do science.
Of course, the Republican Party has never been pro-science: their antipathy for the theory of evolution and stem-cell research is well-known. Until recently, I would have considered these cases unique, and not part of a larger, anti-science agenda.
But recently, the Republican Party seems to have broadened its anti-science rhetoric to include any science, not merely that science that might contradict their fundamentalist worldview.
How else can you explain Sarah Palin's attack on "fruit fly research", Bobby Jindal's attack on "volcano monitoring", or John McCain's tweets? None of these threaten to trespass on the fragile faith of their base. So why react with such hostility?
After Jindal mocked science, Paul Krugman declared the Republican Party "the party of Beavis and Butthead," saying that "the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny."
I don't think it's so benign. The Republican Party is out of power, and it is out of power because its traditional scapegoats are no longer effective. They need a new one. Science, it seems, is against them; perhaps they figure they should be against it, too.