This just in: the new petition to urge President Obama to ban creationism and intelligent design has evolved!
When we first noticed it yesterday, it had garnered 7662 signatures. One day later, it has tallied 11,321. That’s 3659 signatures per day. In order to guarantee Presidential consideration, the petition needs 88,679 more signatures by July 15.
That would require, by my awkward public-school mathematics, just about 3550 new signatures per day. So the future looks bright for this symbolic sally into the culture-wars No Man’s Land.
Who knows what the future brings. Perhaps this campaign will fizzle after the initial buzz dies down. Or just maybe, more and more people will sign per day, blasting past the 100,000 minimum requirement.
I don’t think that would present President Obama with much of a political dilemma. Unlike GOP leaders, Obama does not really need to truckle to religious conservatives. He could easily issue a few diplomatic murmurings about the importance of thorough, accurate science education in the nation’s schools.
I will keep my eyes peeled, in any case, to see how this petition plays out. Stay tuned.
I Love You but You're Going to Hell 
William Bell
/ June 20, 2013I might disagree with your views on Obama’s flexibility, admittedly I haven’t been at this for as long, but the way I look at it, the GOP has the religious right in their pocket and they can do what they want with them. Obama has to cater to the little fundamentalist religious support he can get to ensure the democrats continue to do well.
Adam Laats
/ June 21, 2013I compare President Obama’s position to that of an ambitious leader of the GOP. Remember Marco Rubio’s response last year to a question about the age of the earth? Senator Rubio had to waffle. If he wants to be President, he could not come out and say that mainstream science is correct. President Obama and other Democratic politicians have more wiggle room on the issue. They are eager to portray themselves as the side of “science.”
willbell123
/ June 21, 2013So if a Republican were to ‘come out’ in support of evolution/something similar they would lose to other Republicans?
Adam Laats
/ June 21, 2013Right. I think the standard electoral wisdom is that each party has to satisfy its base in the primary elections. So we usually hear more radical pronouncements from candidates during primary season. Then nominated candidates tend to tack toward the center, look electable and pleasing to the wide center. The game for candidates is usually to appear sincere to the party’s core constituencies, while not seeming extreme to the middle. Barry Goldwater famously did a terrible job at this in 1964, while Reagan excelled at it in 1980.