Nooooo! Not you too, McCain!

I interrupt my vacation again to bring you this cry of lament:

Nooooooo! Say it ain't so!

Via Pharyngula, I learn that the only remaining reasonable Republican Presidential hopeful (leaving aside his advocacy of campaign finance reform that restricts free speech around the time of elections, something I've always disagreed with him about), John McCain, has sold his soul to the creationists:

On Tuesday, though, he sided with the president on two issues that have made headlines recently: teaching intelligent design in schools and Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother who has come to personify the anti-war movement.

McCain told the Star that, like Bush, he believes "all points of view" should be available to students studying the origins of mankind.

The theory of intelligent design says life is too complex to have developed through evolution, and that a higher power must have had a hand in guiding it.

Unfortunately, McCain, like Bill Frist, has apparently figured out that he has no hope of getting the Republican nomination unless he panders to the Republican Party's fundamentalist base. Sadly, John McCain was the only Republican Presidential hopeful with an actual shot at the nomination that I could see myself voting for in 2008. (Indeed, I had supported him over Bush in 2000.) And now he's aligned himself with the antiscience wing of the Republican Party, which, unfortunately, is the dominant wing these days. A disagreement with McCain on his ill-advised and ineffective strategy for campaign finance reform I could overlook, albeit with some difficulty. McCain's swallowing the "intelligent design" Kool-Aid will be much harder for me to overlook, particularly since the "all points of view" canard sounds like it came out of the Discovery Institute's talking points.

Possible explanations for McCain's statement include (1) that McCain really believes that "intelligent design" creationism is worthy of being taught alongside evolution as an "alternative explanation"; (2) that he doesn't have enough knowledge to form an opinion on the issue and so took the easy course of endorsing the mushy platitude of teaching "all points of view" in the schools; or (3) that he doesn't believe that ID is sufficiently supported to be taught in science class but is willing to go against that belief in order to pander to the fundamentalists that dominate the Republican Party. None of these explanations make McCain look good. #1 and #2 imply an ignorance of biology and #3 implies a willingness to go against his beliefs in search of votes.

Three years until the 2008 election, and I'm already screwed as far as picking a candidate.

Rant ended. Time to go back to enjoying the last few days of my vacation.