Charles Johnson quite rightly excoriates Tim Pawlenty for some answers Pawlenty gave about evolution in a recent Newsweek interview:
Let me ask you about social issues your party has been dealing with. In her book, Palin claims that McCain’s handlers wanted her to be silent about her belief in creationism. How would you describe your view?
I can tell you how we handle it in Minnesota. We leave it to the local school districts. We don’t mandate a curriculum or an approach. We allow for something called “intelligent design” to be discussed as a comparative theory. It doesn’t have to be in science class.
[….]
Where are you personally?
Well, you know I’m an evangelical Christian. I believe that God created everything and that he is who he says he was. The Bible says that he created man and woman; it doesn’t say that he created an amoeba and then they evolved into man and woman. But there are a lot of theologians who say that the ideas of evolution andcreationism aren’t necessarily inconsistent; that he could have “created” human beings over time.
David Frum replies that “Pawlenty is a model of sensible modern conservatism” and goes on to say that Pawlenty will have trouble with the religious right anyway because they don’t view him as a real Jesus person (since he converted from Catholicism to evangelicalism when he got married).
I find stories like this, especially when they’re told by two intelligent conservatives (even if I don’t always agree with them) to be quite chilling: we have here a Republican candidate who is an anti-science loon but still may be too sensible and non-Jesus freaky to satisfy the Khmer Rogue faction that may dominate the Republican primaries.
