Right Wing Pundits Take A Long Walk Off A Short Ark
Excellent Reason Mag piece by Ron Bailey on why it might be that some of the right's Big Thinkers are coming out against evolution:

...(T)he neocon assault on Darwinism may not be based on either science or spirituality so much as on politics and political philosophy. That is the view of Paul Gross, a biologist and self-described conservative. Gross is much concerned with the interplay of science and politics--he is the co-author of the 1994 book, Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science--and is puzzled by the attacks on evolutionary biology by people whose political views he largely shares. Regarding Commentary's anti-Darwin article, he says he is mystified that the magazine "would publish the damned thing without at least passing it by a few scientists first."

Gross believes that the conservative attack on Darwin may be a case of tactical politics. Some conservative intellectuals think religious fundamentalists are "essential to the political program of the right," says Gross. As a gesture of solidarity, he says, these intellectuals are publicly embracing arguments that appear to "keep God in the picture."

The end of the Cold War may also be a factor. Marx fell with the Soviet Union; Freud has been discredited by modern psychology and neuroscience. The last standing member of the 19th century's unholy materialist trinity is Darwin. Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial, makes the connection clear: "Darwinism is the most important of the materialist ideologies--Marxism, Freudianism, and behaviorism are others--which have done so much damage to science and society in the 20th century." Kristol agrees. "All I want to do," he told his AEI audience, "is break the bonds of Darwinian materialism which at the moment restrict our imagination. For the moment that's enough."

But something deeper seems to be going on, and the key to it can be found in Bork's assertion in his book that religious "belief is probably essential to a civilized future." These otherwise largely secular intellectuals may well have turned on Darwin because they have concluded that his theory of evolution undermines religious faith in society at large. Of course, this is not a novel thought. Many others have arrived at the same conclusion. Conservative activist Beverly LaHaye, a biblical literalist who is president of Concerned Women for America, puts the matter directly: "If the biblical account of creation in Genesis isn't true, how can we trust the rest of the Bible?"

Kristol and his colleagues may worry that once this one thread is pulled from the fabric of religious belief, perhaps the whole will become unraveled, with grave social consequences. Without the strictures and traditions imposed by a religion that promises to punish sinners, the moral controls that moderate our base desires will lose their validity, leading ultimately to moral chaos. Ironically, today many modern conservatives fervently agree with Karl Marx that religion is "the opium of the people"; they add a heartfelt, "Thank God!"

Bailey's simplified readout of who is and isn't who in moronic thought is below:

Pro-evolution: David Frum, Jonah Goldberg, Charles Krauthammer, William Buckley, James Taranto, John Tierney, Richard Brookhiser, Ramesh Ponnuru, and David Brooks basically accept that it is a genuine scientific explanation for how the diversity of life arose on earth.

Skeptical: William Kristol, Stephen Moore, and Tucker Carlson express some skepticism about the details of evolutionary theory.

Anti-evolution: Grover Norquist and Pat Buchanan are pretty sure that it's wrong and pernicious.

Norman Podhoretz abstained.

Pernicious? Pernicious? I would say "pernicious" is how you describe the thinking of somebody who believes that the earth was created in five days, ten thousand years ago, and all sorts of other wacky shit not supported by the fossile record -- or any record that didn't come from a big book of fairy tales. Tell me something: Why is The Bible any more valid than any of those nutty L. Ron Hubbard tales about how aliens came to earth, etc., etc.?