Friday, September 22, 2006
Up a Tree
In another hopeful sign of the demise of Intelligent Design as a viable political ploy, Dick DeVos, a conservative scion of the Amway fortune running as the GOP gubernatorial candidate in Michigan and doing worse than might be expected against an unpopular incumbent, has stirred up a hornet's nest, by supporting ID, that he is now trying hard to run away from..
He originally said in an interview with The Associated Press that he'd like to see intelligent design taught along with evolution in science classes.
Since then, the conservative Christian has tried to steer the conversation away from his personal views and stress that deciding what's taught in science classes should be left up to local school districts.
He has now gone so far, as reported by Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, to claim that he was misrepresented by the Detroit Free Press by the nefarious means of quoting a press release issued by his own campaign headquarters almost verbatim. Is there nothing that the press won't stoop to?
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As I said earlier, this kind of result shows that support for ID is no longer an easy "throwaway" position that a conservative candidate can safely use to shore up his or her support on the far right.
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Let's keep making it painful to support ID.
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