Facing a difficult re-election campaign against a popular, "pro-life" Democrat (and trailing by twenty points, according to one poll) hard right Republican Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania is now distancing himself from Bush and Iraq, and has come out against teaching the religious ideology of "Intelligent Design" in high school classrooms.
This is a known as a flip-flop. As this story from a local newspaper points out, Santorum wrote in a Washington Times editorial a few years ago that Intelligent Design "is"a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in the classroom."
Santorum quietly shifted his position on Intelligent Design earlier this year, after his poll numbers went south, but before Bush’s did. Maybe he sensed which was the wind was blowing.
I asked Chris Mooney, author of "The Republican War on Science," about the flip-flop during an interview in August. Mooney had noticed the shift as well, and joked that Santorum "was for Intelligent Design before he was against it."
File it under another Republican chicken coming home to roost.
Kit Stolz 