My friend Sheril Kirshenbaum has a newish blog, Culture of Science, and she captured this exchange from the GOP debate:
HARRIS to HUNTSMAN: You yourself have said the party is in danger of becoming anti- science. Who on this stage is anti-science?
HUNTSMAN: Listen, when you make comments that fly in the face of what 98 out of 100 climate scientists have said, when you call into question the science of evolution, all I’m saying is that, in order for the Republican Party to win, we can’t run from science. We can’t run from mainstream conservative philosophy. We’ve got to win voters.
A better answer would have been, they’re all antiscience, by necessity. Mittens of Romney perhaps less so at one time, but now he’s got to chase the crazy vote like everyone else, and Tricky Rick Perry is giving him a run for the money. It’s rapidly becoming a sort of cold war of crazy to see who can sounds the nuttiest.
The other day I overheard a couple of people joking about who was crazier, Michelle Bachmann or Rick Perry. The answer of course is neither, they’re just cynical. But some of the voters they’re going after are indeed crazy and it’s not easy to say which group wins the contest. It’s like trying to choose between a half-naked gibbering lunatic standing on the street corner screaming at the sky or a quiet loner scanning cereal boxes at the grocery store for secret messages. They’re both nuts in their own way.
I’m no psychic (hah!) but I can take a stab at why Huntsman avoided directly answering the question; he’s clearly not doing well in the Republican race, and he doesn’t want to insult his party by basically saying, “They’re all idiots.”
That’s my guess, at least. I could be wrong.
I heard a Huntsman sound-bite the other day where he was trying to paint that he had reasonable views about science.
But it was followed by voodoo economics.
I’m not sure I agree with him about what is “mainstream philosophy” among conservatives.
.
They may both be a part of a plot to make Sarah Palin appear comparatively sane.
Huntsman and Gary Johnson, that is. He polls as well as Cain at least…