It's not exactly headline news that the Republicans routinely use abortion as a divisive issue to beat the Democrats around with. When they hand us an equally divisive issue, like torture, our people do not seem to be able to press it home. Instead, they run from the subject, and I don't have much hope that our people in Congress want to push it.
The good news is that Chris Matthews has identified a wedge issue with fewer political downsides: Evolution.
The bad news is that Chris Matthews is an idiot, and I'm sorry if any idiots reading this feel that I'm insulting them.
Educated people understand that the Theory of Evolution has become the Grand Unified Theory of biology. While new details and wrinkles of The Theory are still being explored, its broad outline is not in doubt, and all of modern biology uses it as the basic tool of that science.
(I read voraciously on the subject, Darwin, Dawkins, Gould, Weiner et al. Please do not attempt to derail this by arguing about evolution.)
But evolution is a touchy subject in the Know-Nothing Party. It exposes them, because you can side with the 21st Century or the 19th on the subject, but you don't really get to split the difference with "micro v. macro" evolution or "Intelligent Design." They like to present it as a moral choice, when of course it is an intellectual choice with no moral implications whatever.
In recent weeks Matthews had Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence and Tom Tancredo on his show, and he asked both of them about evolution v. creationism. Both were idiots on the subject, but because Matthews didn't have the background, he couldn't pin them down.
Chris Matthews found a great wedge, then he didn't drive it in, because Chris Matthews does not know doodoo about evolution, other than the fact that he accepts it. And these politicians are not the polished professional creationism debaters. They hedge and stammer and try to change the subject.
Matthews' failure does not mean it isn't a good issue. Here's hoping Jon Stewart or another intelligent and well-read interviewer takes these clowns on, and makes them debate this in public. Maybe they'll let me write the questions.
I want this to be a hot topic of discussion for what I see as a very good reason. If the subject divides the creationists from those who accept modern science, I want my party to have all the the latter, and I couldn't care less about the goals of the former.