Election 2008: Initial Elimination, or Do You Believe in Evolution?

We often talk about the need to elect our political leaders based “on the issues” rather than popularity, party loyalty, or media coverage. I don’t like that too often the public attention is paid on the highly publicized, but completely trivial aspects of the presidential race: like Howard Dean’s yelp, Al Gore’s sighs during the debates, or even sweaty Nixon on televised debates.

So, in order to not fall into the “public opinion” trap, I will try to sort through where the candidates stand on issues which are important to me.

Today’s Criteria: Do you believe in evolution?

On May 3, 2007 debate of the Republican candidates, a question was posed: How many of you don’t believe in evolution?

The three hands that went up—indicating that they did not believe in evolution—were (former) Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas.

So, in the Republican camp, that leaves:

• Sam Brownback
• Jim Gilmore
• Rudy Giuliani
• Mike Huckabee
• Duncan Hunter
• John McCain
• Ron Paul
• Mitt Romney
• Tom Tancredo
• Fred Thompson
• Tommy Thompson

That leaves 8.