Why scientists are seldom Republicans

[Political Tiger]

Have you ever wondered what the world would be like without scientists? Ask the Republican Party. It lives in such a world. Republicans have been so successful in driving out of their party anyone who endeavors in scientific inquiry that pretty soon there won't be anyone left who can distinguish a periodic table from a kitchen table.

It is no wonder the Republican throngs showing up to disrupt town hall meetings on health care reform are so gullible, willing to believe absurd claims like the coming of "death panels." Their party is nearly devoid of neuroscientists, astrophysicists, marine biologists or any other scientific professional who would insist on intellectual rigor, objective evidence and sound reasoning as the basis for public policy development. The people left don't have that kind of discipline and don't expect it from their leaders. They are willing to believe anything some right-wing demagogue with a cable show or pulpit tells them, no matter how outlandish.

Since the Sonia Sotomayor nomination we've been hearing about the GOP's Hispanic deficit. Only 26 percent of Latino registered voters now say they identify with or lean toward the Republican Party. But that's a full house compared with scientists. Only 12 percent of scientists in a poll issued last month by the Pew Research Center say they are Republican or lean toward the GOP, while fully 81 percent of scientists say they are Democrats or lean Democratic.

We shouldn't be surprised that people who are open to evidence-based thinking have abandoned the Republican Party. The GOP has proudly adopted the mantle of the "Terri Schiavo, global warming shwarming" party with the Bush administration helping cement the image by persistently subverting science to serve a religious agenda or corporate greed.

But what worries me is not the shrunken relevancy of the GOP, a party in which 56 percent of its members oppose funding of embryonic stem cell research, 39 percent believe humans have always existed on Earth in their present form, and in which only 30 percent say human activity is warming the planet. It is that this nation's future depends upon people who don't think that way and the Republican Party is closing the door to them.

http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/why-scientists-are-seldom-republicans/1027502

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. What bugs me is how the flat earth society is so happy to use what liberals create

and invent, yet hold them in complete contempt. They should be banished to a land where the only things to facilitate their lives are things that conservatives created.

[zbdent]

2. it's because they know that whatever the liberals get through benefits

mankind ...

whatever conservatives get through benefits a select few, if any ...

[rhett o rick]

3. I think they don't care what's invented. They'd be happy if nothing is invented.

Inventions require one to expand your mind. Right wing authoritarians don't want to expand their mind. They would love to believe the world was flat or that the sun and planets revolved around the earth. They fight knowledge tooth and nail. Like Pol Pot, they'd kill all intellectuals if they could. The expression "ignorance is bliss" is for them. Don't ruin their bliss with knowledge or truths.

[Doctor_J]

4. If Repukes were scientists, every discovery would have to be approved by Limpballs

Tuesday: Repuke scientist: We have isolated a gene that predisposes a person to be gay

Wednesday: Limpballs: There is no such thing as a gay gene. Gayness is a lifestyle, unlike my drug addiction and pedophilia

Thursday: Scientist: I apologize for saying there is a gay gene. Gayness is a lifestyle

[applegrove]

5. The GOP is all about myths to get the middle class and poor to vote against

their own best interests.