Gov. Rick Perry left his bootprints all over the Republican presidential race last week.
Thankfully, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. was able to tweet up the mess.
“To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy,” Huntsman wrote.
Rather than crazy, we’d like to commend Huntsman for his common sense. In fewer than 140 characters, the largely forgotten GOP candidate became the first member of the GOP field to call Perry’s bluffs.
And that led to a spot on ABC News on Sunday in which Huntsman offered a sage assessment.
“The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party — the anti-science party, we have a huge problem. We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012.”
But since officially entering the race two weeks ago, Perry has made a series of scientific claims that only the party’s farthest-right fringe and fact-checkers could love.
Prompted for his thoughts on evolution in New Hampshire, Perry offered: “That’s a theory that is out there — and it’s got some gaps in it. In Texas, we teach both creationism and evolution. I figure you’re smart enough to figure out which one is right.”
Your first reaction might be to ask, if one is right, why bother teaching the other at all? Well, as the Pulitzer Prize-winning website points out, Texas actually doesn’t teach creationism. So it’s fair to say Texas has figured out which one is right.
And the “gaps” in the theory are largely those areas between fundamentalist religious dogma as outlined in the Book of Genesis and the science, which is bolstered by decades of research into fossils and the human genome.
On the same swing through New Hampshire, Perry offered heated rhetoric on global warming.
He said he doesn’t think humans are contributing to global climate change and that scientists are coming forward to support that view “almost weekly, or even daily.” And, he added, “there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.”
Again, media outlets put the claims to the test and, again, they were found to be false. In a lengthy examination of the facts, pointed out a 2010 National Academy of Sciences study that found between 97 percent and 98 percent of researchers publishing in the field believe in some degree of anthropogenic climate change.
By “manipulation,” we assume Perry is addressing the “trick” added to data that was pointed out in e-mails stolen from a British university and posted online two years ago. As The Washington Post reported, no fewer than five investigations have been launched on the topic and each has exonerated the “half-dozen or so” scientists involved.
If nothing else, Perry thus far has demonstrated that his campaign isn’t about to let science, or the truth, stand in the way of his grandstanding. We were happy to see Huntsman willing to stand up to it.
