Republican candidates debate evolution

WASHINGTON — Evolution has roiled state and local school boards for years. Now it's entered presidential politics.

Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, have been explaining their positions ever since they and Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo first indicated in a May 3 debate that they do not believe in evolution.

Their religious views, they say, are compatible with science.

"I think science is marvelous and wonderful, and I enjoy the benefit of it every day," Huckabee told reporters Wednesday at a lunch. He said he embraces Scripture, but "to me, it's not a conflict with science."

People may say the story of creation is "preposterous," Huckabee said, but "if I believe anything about God, I believe that he's in the miracle business."

The three Republicans who reject evolution are long shots for the nomination and a minority of the 10-man GOP field. Still, Democratic strategist Mark Mellman, Kerry's 2004 pollster who is not affiliated with a current candidate, said they make their party look like "a front for the Flat Earth Society."

The image could cause serious damage with "swing voters who are culturally progressive," Mellman said — "not because evolution is their most important issue but because it says something significant about their cultural orientation. They aren't interested in rational scientific explanation and discourse."

Many Democrats, notably presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004, have accused President Bush of ignoring scientific consensus on global warming and constricting advances in stem-cell research by limiting federal funds.

Democrats already are pushing such themes. Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason, is a broad attack on Bush administration policymaking and says a number of scientific issues have been treated "as primarily religious issues." New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, on the presidential campaign trail, often calls for a return to "evidence-based decision-making."

A new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll suggests that a majority of voters agree at least in part with Huckabee, Brownback and Tancredo on evolution.

"Most of us don't think that we're just apes with trousers," said Gary Bauer, a Christian conservative who ran for president in 2000. He said Huckabee and Brownback have been "refreshing" on the subject. He also said that, while a president doesn't have direct influence on curriculum, the discussion is "an interesting marker on worldviews."

Lawrence Krauss, a scientist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said it is a warning flag. He said a president "who denies something at the basis of modern biology" would not be a credible leader on education or economic growth driven by biotechnology, would hobble scientific research and would lack international stature.

Huckabee argues that voters don't care about evolution — they ask about things like gas prices, health care, college tuition and Iraq.

Republican Don Racheter, a self-described fiscal and cultural conservative who heads a free-market think tank in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, said terrorism and taxes are top U.S. voter concerns. He said evolution isn't high on the social-issues list. "What trips people's triggers are people's positions on gay marriage and abortion," he said.

Racheter also said people have a right to their own view on how life began and how it should be taught, and said he's surprised Democrats don't agree: "They ought to be for choice in religion and choice in education as well as choice in reproductive rights."


[Should people be taught the modern equivalent of the flat earth theory? Racheter is wrong. Students may choose not to attend the class, or to attend it and discount the facts, but the physical evidence that the Earth wasn't created in 6 days is considerable. Creationism should not be taught as scientific fact.

In a poll, about two thirds of Americans said creationisn is true, about half said evolution is true, and about one quarter said both theories are probably true.]