The GOP Conspiracy Problem

Politico writes about "The GOP Headache" that the party currently has. In this case it is the conspiracy theorists (badly chosen word there) that believe, in the complete absence of evidence, that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and, therefore, is not qualified to be POTUS. As Lisa Lerer and Daniel Libit write:

As GOP Rep. Mike Castle learned the hard way back home in Delaware this month, there’s no easy way to deal with the small but vocal crowd of right-wing activists who refuse to believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

At a town hall meeting in Georgetown, a woman demanded to know why Castle and his colleagues were “ignoring” questions about Obama’s birth certificate — questions that have been put to rest repeatedly by state officials in Hawaii, where the birth certificate and all other credible evidence show that Obama was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961.

When Castle countered that Obama is, in fact, “a citizen of the United States,” the crowd erupted in boos, the woman seized control of the gathering and led a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. The video went viral; by Sunday, it had been viewed on YouTube more than half a million times.

This is the kind of thing that makes the GOP voting base look like imbeciles. Here's the problem: it isn't the only conspiracy problem that the GOP has. Much of the voting base thinks that organized science is involved in a conspiracy to cover up the shortcomings of evolutionary theory in an effort to push atheism on American society. This appears in many different forms, from state legislators, state education boards, and organizations such as the AIG and the Discovery Institute.

It appears in various guises, such as the arguments that there are no transitional fossils, the Cambrian period is too short for evolution of modern phyla to have occurred, Hitler's ideas came from Darwin and so on. It doesn't matter that all of these arguments have been rebutted ad nauseum. People that either should know better but don't or people that know better but aren't willing to tell the truth will continue to peddle the nonsense as long as there are people that will listen and wish to hear it.

The Nirthers, as Charles Johnson calls them, want so badly to believe that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, despite no evidence to the contrary, that they will continue to protest and harangue the powers that be until they get the answer they want. This is no different than anti-evolutionist Donald McLeroy saying about all of the scientists who wrote the Texas science curriculum, "I disagree with these experts. Someone has got to stand up to experts."

Between the Nirthers and the creationist/ID crowd, likely voters who voted democrat are largely going to continue doing just that, reasoning that the GOP has gone off the deep end. Every creationist/ID bill that is drafted is done so by a Republican. Every time a school board considers watering down evolution, it is always the Republican faction that does so. Until the GOP officially divests itself of the creationists and the nirthers, it will continue to be seen as the backward party that promotes ignorance instead of education and conspiracy instead of common sense.
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