Depressing Gallup Poll On Evolution

Spoon brings us this cheery bit of news from the flat earth file:

The majority of Republicans in the United States do not believe the theory of evolution is true and do not believe that humans evolved over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. This suggests that when three Republican presidential candidates at a May debate stated they did not believe in evolution, they were generally in sync with the bulk of the rank-and-file Republicans whose nomination they are seeking to obtain.

Spoon gives us the breakdown:

The partisan numbers are 68% creationism to 30% evolution among Republicans, and 57% evolution to 40% creationism among Democrats. Of course, the divide between those who attend church regularly and those who do not is far larger (74% creationism to 24% evolution among those who attend church weekly, compared with 71% to 26% the other way)

And if there's a silver lining, its in the numbers among independents:

Most interesting and underreported in stories covering this issue, however, are the numbers among independents: a full 61% of independents believe in evolution, compared to 37% for creationism--a higher belief in evolution than among Democrats.

This is welcome news since independents are the fastest growing voting block, and their strong rejection of creationism signals, as spoon rightly puts it:

but another example of a strong majority of "swing" voting population moving away from bread-and-butter Republican beliefs

This dynamic was on full display on Hardball last week when Matthews could hardly contain his disbelief that the man in front of him, the subject of his interview, was telling him he didn't not "believe in evolution."

MATTHEWS: I didn‘t think Mr. DeLay would be arguing evolution in the 21^st century. But here we go again. We‘re talking about us and the monkeys and everything.

[snip]

MATTHEWS: Well, here we are back in the Scopes trial, the monkey trial...[Gov. Huckabee] clearly said, we are not descended from the primates.

[snip]

MATTHEWS: Look, I grew up in this country, too. I know we don‘t argue about this every day. But 6o percent of the people believe, basically, the fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. So it‘s not like it‘s an exotic position that Huckabee is taking there. Or you might have.

DELAY: Well, you...

MATTHEWS: It‘s not an exotic position.

DELAY: You‘re sitting there, and you‘re giggling about it.

MATTHEWS: I‘m giggling, because I said—I‘ll say to you on and off the air, I think it‘s fascinating that, in the 21^st century, we‘re having the monkey trial all over again. And I still think it‘s weird.

For all of Matthews' problems, I think in general he serves as a fairly good bellwether for where the movable middle in this country is and here, it's clearly "you doon't believe in WHAT!?" Not to mention the fact that DeLay bobbed and weaved as much as he could to avoid admitting he's not an evolution guy. They know they're in the fringes of the country and they know it's a problem.