No, only the undeserving ones. [sarcasm]
I just thought that one deserved style points. Plus, a glimpse into the abyss from time to time is not a bad thing.
Careful. I think that’s how one turns into a [del]Republican[/del] Reaver.
No, that’s not the issue. The point is that the guy being racist there was
That is, just some random idiot with an internet connection. There is plenty of stupidity among PROMINENT Republicans (and tea partiers) without having to resort to the equivalent of finding stupid posts on Fox News message boards and trumpeting their stupidity.
Republican acceptance of evolution now about 43% and dropping:
“There also are sizable differences by party affiliation in beliefs about evolution, and the gap between Republicans and Democrats has grown. In 2009, 54% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats said humans have evolved over time, a difference of 10 percentage points. Today, 43% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats say humans have evolved, a 24-point gap.”
Republicans certainly show very little evidence of having evolved, so their disbelief is understandable.
It’s worth noting that this doesn’t seem to be republicans rejecting evolution, based on the overall trendline - but rather, that people who understand evolution rejecting republicans. They are getting so backwards in their zealotry that they’re driving intelligent people away from them, such that now, a majority of them reject basic facts in favor of bullshit beliefs.
Karrius: Exactly. One common complaint, which we have heard over and over, from a good many former Republicans, especially moderates, is, “I didn’t leave the party; the party left me.”
Tom Tomorrow’s “Year in Crazy,” Part the First and Part the Second. Mostly but not entirely about Pub/RW craziness.
I’m sure your scenario is non-zero, but if that percentage had really switched parties, the 2012 election would have been a complete landslide instead of being rather close. Could a nearly equal number of Democrats have switched to Republicanism because they couldn’t deal with evolution? That seems farfetched to me.
No. It’s far more likely that there are a LOT of people who are ashamed to identify as Republicans but still vote that way because, while they don’t agree with the current direction of the party, they still are closer to the party’s fiscal goals than the Democrats’. So they’ll answer polls as “Independent” but vote as Republicans.
I don’t see how you get that from the survey cited. It shows that acceptance of evolution slightly declined among independents, from 67% to 65%. It seems likely that Republicans leaving their party for intellectual reasons since 2009 would now consider themselves independents — going all the way to Democrat over mostly non-policy issues is too large a leap for just four years.
If the Republican decrease is largely due to people leaving the party, we should be seeing an increase, not a decrease, among independents accepting evolution.
This. It was what was behind the whole “skewed polls” fantasy the GOP had in the last general election. So many voters refuse to identify as republican that they thought republicans were being undersampled, and were confident the resulting lead among self proclaimed independents would result in a Romney victory.
Yeah.
It sucks, but I suspect that the internet has allowed disbelief in evolution to grow. There’s the internet phenomenon that people self-segregate, and Republicans are probably surrounded by plenty of opinions that evolution is ‘just a theory,’ and not nearly as many challenges to their belief that God designed everything.
From my home state:
HBU offers degrees in Biology & Nursing. Which this court case has declared to be worthless…
Yeah, it’s amazing to me how the internet has worked out. You would think that having all the facts you need just a few keystrokes away would put an end to the abysmal ignorance we see on Fox and Friends and the like, but instead, it seems to be growing.
But the self-segregation thing explains it. 20 years ago, you had to be pretty far around the bend to not notice that your stupid opinions were considered fringe by most of the smarter people you knew. Today, if you get your news from Fox, and your political discussion from right wingnut web sites, then even if only 5% of the people in the country agree with you, that’s tens of millions of people, and you start believing that almost everybody but the liberal commie hippies are on the same page.
Agree on avoiding random idiotic comments, but we need to be sure to include anything on Faux / Fox News as coming from the official propaganda arm of the GOP.
Struck me the other day.
Republicans: There is no recovery! The workforce is shrinking because people have stopped looking for work! There are NOT jobs out there! Pay no attention to the unemployment rate!
And then: We need to stop unemployment insurance, because it’s keeping people from looking for jobs.
What jobs, guys?
All the jobs the billionaires would create if we’d only cut their taxes more, of course. Aren’t you paying attention? :rolleyes:
Let’s review, shall we?