But the stem cell battle is not just a high-profile clash of values. The dispute provides a sharp focus on how science may help reshape America. Several states have set aside billions of dollars to support stem cell research, and the new federal money Obama is promising will generally flow to those areas. That means states supporting stem cell research will experience an economic windfall while attracting highly educated technology workers who tend to vote Democratic. The more conservative states restricting stem cell research will attract fewer funds and fewer socially liberal voters. In short, a state’s stem cell policy will influence electoral results and help determine whether a state turns red or blue.

At the moment, stem cell science mirrors November’s electoral map. Twelve states allow the use of public money to fund stem cell research — and Obama won them all in 2008. Four states have moved to either restrict stem cell research or limit public expenditures for it since Obama’s announcement — and they all voted for John McCain. But now that map could change.

In stem cell politics, key battlegrounds include Georgia, Texas and Arizona — red states where Obama and the Democrats made inroads. These are places that have significant academic and scientific infrastructures but that Republicans control politically. Restrictions on science there could slow the kind of economic growth associated with Democratic support. At the same time, the GOP is putting its popularity at risk by curbing research that most voters support. The new regional political dynamic of the stem cell war is set.

Most cells are specialized. Your various forms of white blood cells fight illnesses, while red blood cells help oxygen circulate in the body. Stem cells are unspecialized, waiting to be assigned roles. If we could give stem cells the right biological instructions, we could use them to repair damaged body parts such as heart muscle cells, limiting heart disease.

Adult stem cells help maintain a particular bodily organ or tissue. The brain has its own reserve supply of adult stem cells. But embryonic stem cells have not yet been directed to a particular body part, increasing their potential value. They might help fix any organ or tissue.

Extracting the stem cells from a days-old embryo, usually acquired from an in vitro fertilization clinic, destroys the embryo. Many scientists have argued that since clinics produce more embryos than they use, employing the remaining ones for medicine is ethically justified. But stem cell research opponents disagree and have responded by trying to alter the practices of fertility clinics.

In 2007, researchers announced the development of induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSCs) in humans — adult cells reprogrammed to mimic embryonic stem cells. In theory, IPSCs could bring the political battle over stem cells to an end, since producing them does not involve embryos. But many scientific hurdles remain to be cleared before IPSCs can be considered a safe and complete replacement for embryonic stem cells.

In 2001, Bush announced a ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, except for work on a limited number of already existing stem cell “lines.” Since then, 12 states have funded stem cell research themselves. California’s program, at $3 billion, is the biggest. The state aims to build a dozen stem cell facilities at universities and other research institutes and says it has awarded more than $600 million in research money so far.

The overall economic impact of the biotech industry is even greater than the numbers suggest, as industry earnings create a “multiplier effect” that ripples through a local economy. In California, such activity includes the construction workers building the new Mission Bay research facility for the University of California at San Francisco, and the service industries that grow around well-paid technology workers. A 2004 Milken Institute report estimated that every biotechnology job in California creates an additional 3.5 jobs. In 2003, industry earnings in California totaled about $5 billion but created about $21 billion in overall economic output.

States not investing in stem cell science are missing out on this bonanza. Not only is this part of biotech economically regenerative, but it’s also popular. A 2007 Gallup Poll showed that by a 64-to-30 margin, Americans think embryonic stem cell research is “morally acceptable.” But social conservatives such as Oklahoma state Rep. Mike Reynolds, disagree. Reynolds introduced a bill making it a misdemeanor to conduct research on embryonic stem cells. “I am a pro-life candidate, and I believe life begins at conception,” Reynolds says.

In Georgia, a bill under consideration would put limits on both stem cell research and in vitro fertility clinic practices. “A person is a person no matter how small,” says Dan Becker, president of Georgia Right to Life. “There is a paradigm shift going on, a shift toward personhood. You’re going to see more states adopt that strategy.” Indeed, bills in Texas and Mississippi would bar state funding for embryonic stem cell research. Arizona is among the states already featuring similar laws.

But Georgia best exemplifies the political and economic issues at stake. The state “is a prime example of the legislative revolt as a result of Obama’s executive order,” says Patrick Kelly, director of state government relations at Bio, an umbrella group representing biotechnology firms.

Georgia may be red on electoral maps, but in November, Obama lost to McCain there by a mere 5 points — the best showing by any Democratic presidential candidate, apart from Southerners Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, since 1960. Democratic challenger Jim Martin forced incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss to a runoff with a 3-point loss, although Chambliss’ subsequent 15-point victory shows that a real gap still exists.

In March, the Georgia Senate passed a stem cell bill that limits new embryonic stem cell research and prevents couples who use in vitro fertilization clinics from authorizing the destruction of their own remaining embryos. The state House of Representatives may take up the bill in the fall. The measure shows how conservatives are linking stem cell research to abortion by promoting the “personhood” of embryos.

“We’ve been good at spinning many antiabortion scenarios,” Becker says. “What we’ve failed to do is personalize the embryo issue. We’re shifting and attacking the position that in the first trimester this is nothing other than a medical blob. This is a human being.” Georgia Right to Life has created television spots to reinforce the message.

The bill’s opponents emphasize their own moral interests. The legislation “would tell patients that we are not interested in helping them,” says Charles Craig, president of Georgia Bio, which is lobbying against the bill along with various patients’ rights organizations.

As far as the economic consequences, Craig believes that “if Georgia were to restrict science considered legal and ethical by the federal government, it would send a message that Georgia is out of step, and possibly anti-science and anti-technology.”

Biotech backers want to develop the state’s Innovation Crescent, running from Atlanta to Athens, which features research universities including Georgia Tech, Emory and the University of Georgia. The state’s life science industry has grown 140 percent since 1993, although the state lags in some measures. While ninth in population in the U.S., Georgia ranked 22nd in the number of biotech workers in 2003.

Stem cell research can be funded in at least four ways: federal funds, state money, private gifts and venture capital. Banning state funds eliminates only one income stream. But that can lead to substantial economic disparities. In 2006, New York’s state agencies, which are vigorously pursuing biotech growth, spent about $100 million more on scientific research and development than did Georgia’s, nearly five times as much per capita.

State funds attract additional research dollars, magnifying these discrepancies. One modest piece of legislation in California, the Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Act, named for a young man who was paralyzed playing football, authorized $12.5 million in state funding — but garnered $50 million in matching grants.

“There’s a huge push-pull effect,” says Don Reed, Roman Reed’s father, who is now vice president of Americans for Cures, a stem cell research advocacy group. “If I were running a state, I would not wait to set up a funding program. It’s going to help their economies.”

Kelly agrees. “Places that have put in place stem cell programs also have more scientific infrastructure and an indigenous research community,” he says. “And they will continue to lead the charge because they’re that much further ahead.”

On the other hand, state funding bans can be both a symbolic and a tangible deterrent to scientists — and hinder a state’s economy. In a 2005 Science paper, researchers Joanna Kempner, Clifford Perlis and John Merz found that scientists pursuing controversial research feel cornered not only by formal restrictions — like funding laws — but also by social pressures. “Informal limitations are more prevalent and pervasive than formal constraints,” they write.

Texas-based journalist Bill Bishop, coauthor of “The Big Sort,” a book about the social polarization of America, has discussed the problem of social stigmatization with Houston-area scientists. “They were saying, ‘I don’t want to live some place where I’m considered immoral,’” Bishop says. “They pick up these signals and they don’t want to work in a setting where they will feel shunned.” Likewise, Craig suggests, “If Georgia is singled out as a state restricting this research, it could give scientists pause about coming here.”

Stem cell opponents, in Georgia or elsewhere, are unconcerned with economic fallout. “I have no interest in supporting the economy of murdering unborn children,” says Reynolds, the Oklahoma legislator.

But if state support for stem cell science makes an economic difference, does it matter at the ballot box? Although scientists and technology workers are hardly a unified voting bloc, expanding a regional science community seems to increase the number of educated, socially liberal voters. And that helps Democrats. In the 2008 election, 17 percent of the electorate had attended graduate school, and those voters supported Obama by a 58-40 ratio, compared to his overall 53-46 margin of victory.

Most likely, highly educated voters have already colored the electoral map in North Carolina, poster child for biotechnology growth. In the Raleigh-Durham area’s Research Triangle, local leaders have aggressively recruited biotech firms and promoted the region’s universities as sources of intellectual capital. In the state, Obama beat McCain by 13,692 votes, but won the 13 self-identified Research Triangle counties by 145,498 votes. That’s over 100,000 more than Bill Clinton’s Research Triangle margin in 1992. And while more than one factor explains this increase — high turnout, student vote — North Carolina’s high-tech growth surely helped turn the state blue in 2008.

“If you look at where states are growing, it’s the urban areas, and clearly technology plays a leading role,” says Ruy Teixeira, coauthor of “The Emerging Democratic Majority.” “Biotechnology is one of the things that create growth, with implications politically. The effect is that it will make those areas more progressive.” Georgia could follow the same general pattern. “I don’t think it’s far out of reach,” Teixeira says, citing the potential for economic changes in the Atlanta area. “That’s going to be the ground where a shift takes place.” It certainly has room to grow. Georgia is slightly bigger than North Carolina in population, yet according to the Milken Institute numbers, the biotech business accounts for only about 17,000 jobs in Georgia, compared with 127,000 jobs in North Carolina.

To be sure, there are only so many biology Ph.D.s out there who vote. “The question is, What gets you from tens of thousands of high-tech voters to a larger change in voting patterns?” says Andrew Gelman, director of the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University and coauthor of the book “Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State.” One prominent type of answer comes from economic theorist Richard Florida, who believes information-age cities are magnets for “creative class” workers, perpetuating a blend of high-tech growth and social liberalism. Teixeira calls these places “ideopolises.”

Biotechnology’s future jobs will also be filled by the young, who trend heavily Democratic: Obama won the 18-to-29 age group by a 66-32 ratio. Georgia has a young population, although the creative-class thesis holds that such workers follow jobs across the map. In Texas, there is a potent research infrastructure, albeit in a large state, and multiple institutes have started stem cell research in recent years. These include the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, the Heart Hospital of Austin, and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, among others. But according to the Milken survey, the state had just one-third the biotech revenue of North Carolina.

Arizona seems like another Democratic target. Obama lost by just 8 points on McCain’s home turf, and Janet Napolitano was a popular Democratic governor. Today, Arizona State University, in traditionally GOP-friendly Maricopa County, has been attempting a huge science-based expansion. But the state’s embryonic stem cell research ban may be one reason it is in the lower half of the national rankings in biotech revenue. That is a continued roadblock in a state that Democrats find tantalizing in electoral terms. “Maricopa County used to be strongly Republican,” Teixeira says. “If Democrats get close enough to win there, they can win in Arizona. Texas is a little further away.”

Purple-shaded Missouri, which allows but does not fund embryonic research, is another state to watch. And the battleground states that Obama happened to win, which also fund stem cell science — Florida, Ohio, Virginia, even Indiana — remain highly contested, meaning the Democrats could benefit from further creative-class development.

The stem cell skirmishes epitomize the problems that Republicans are having as they grapple with the future. For now the GOP is reaching into its old playbook, trying to energize its base through cultural politics, with no guarantee that the stem cell debate will take place on their terms. “Stem cell research is popular,” Gelman says. “That’s where the Democrats want the battle to be. The Republicans want the battle to be about abortion.” State-level politicians from conservative districts may be staging a rear-guard action that displeases the larger public — and many Republicans nationally. A Gallup Poll from February, just before Obama’s stem cell decision, showed 39 percent of Republicans agreeing that embryonic stem cell research restrictions should be eased or eliminated.

Wedge issues are supposed to split the other party, not your own. Currently the GOP’s stem cell opposition seems more like an effort to forestall the kinds of social and economic changes that help Democrats, instead of providing a way forward for Republicans. Indeed, to consider the deep limitations of the GOP’s position, ask one question: What if stem cell research does create a major breakthrough? “If stem cells provided a cure for juvenile diabetes, this issue would be a whisper in the wind,” says Kelly. For now the battle continues, but it’s clear which way the wind is blowing.

In fact, even though virtually every Republican presidential candidate kissed Trump’s ring, it’s further down the ballot where he has had the biggest financial impact. He gave $5,000 to Connecticut GOP Senate nominee Linda McMahon last year and $30,800 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the campaign arm of Senate Republicans, which did not return a request for comment.

On the House side, he gave $2,500 to Rep. Ed Royce’s, R-Cal., reelection effort; another $1,000 to Tea Party favorite Rep. Allen West, R-Fla.; and $2,000 to Rep. Peter King, R-NY. And while he’s given to Democrats in the past, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, all of Trump’s donations in this year’s election cycle were to Republicans, including Romney ($2,500) and disgraced former New York Rep. Chris Lee, who resigned after being caught looking for sex on Craigslist. (Trump gave $500, which appears to have been returned.)

Trump has been especially involved with West, whose campaign did not return a request for comment. The “Apprentice” star appeared with the congressman at a Tea Party rally in Florida last April, and West even said he was open to being Trump’s vice presidential pick if the real estate mogul somehow won the GOP nomination. West told Newsmax at the time that he hoped Trump was “very serious” about his presidential bid. West also accepted $2,500 from Joseph Farah, the birther editor of World Net Daily, in 2008. (It’s Farah’s only political donation the past three cycles.)

But perhaps no candidate has closer or deeper ties to Trump than McMahon, who also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. McMahon made her money through the WWE professional wrestling league, which her husband founded.

Trump has been involved in the sport for years, which suits his flamboyant and phony image. Wrestlemania IV and V were both held at Trump Plaza, and a video that made the rounds on Twitter yesterday shows Trump tackling Vince McMahon at Wrestlemania 23. Trump and two beefy wrestlers hold down and restrain McMahon before shaving his head to wild cheers from the packed arena.

Trump’s ties to Linda McMahon became a campaign issue earlier this year when Democrat Chris Murphy slammed his opponent for taking Trump’s money. “That’s right, the man who led the charge to see President Obama’s birth certificate, report cards and test scores has set his sights on Connecticut’s Senate seat,” Murphy campaign manager Kenny Curran said in a fundraising email to supporters in February. The Connecticut Democratic Party even cut a web ad attacking McMahon that featured Trump.

The piece is largely an attempt to add a patina of respectability to the ancient, brainless comment thread talking point about how Robert Byrd was in the Klan, but lots of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act, so therefore Democrats are the real racists. (In this respect, the piece is an homage to Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism,” which attempted to expand “Nazi stands for National Socialist” to book length, without pictures.) The only problem is that the “lie” he’s arguing against is 100 percent true, except when he states it in such a way that it no longer resembles what anyone has ever actually claimed.

So: It’s true, and no one denies this, that Republicans used to be very good on civil rights and Democrats used to be super racist. It’s true that Woodrow Wilson was a bigot and (Northern, liberal) Republican senators were better than (Southern, conservative) Democratic senators on civil rights in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Williamson’s argument seems to be that Republicans couldn’t have taken advantage of a Democratic split over civil rights by appealing to racist white Southern voters because Republicans were too uniformly pro-civil rights, themselves. (This great big lie he’s debunking is one that Nixon and Lee Atwater and Ronald Reagan happily signed on to — they were thrilled when the Democrats fractured the New Deal coalition by eventually embracing civil rights!)

Williamson would, I guess, call it revisionist history, but he has revised all of the history out of it.

Even if the Republicans’ rise in the South had happened suddenly in the 1960s (it didn’t) and even if there were no competing explanation (there is), racism — or, more precisely, white southern resentment over the political successes of the civil-rights movement — would be an implausible explanation for the dissolution of the Democratic bloc in the old Confederacy and the emergence of a Republican stronghold there. That is because those southerners who defected from the Democratic party in the 1960s and thereafter did so to join a Republican party that was far more enlightened on racial issues than were the Democrats of the era, and had been for a century.

Oh, did they? It’s dubious to argue that the party that nominated Barry Goldwater for president was “far more enlightened” than the one that nominated Kennedy, but Johnson was a big ol’ Texas racist, so sure, fine, pretend Nelson Rockefeller cancels out Barry. But the segregationists didn’t all wake up and decide to vote for Republicans starting in 1965 — they revolted. George Wallace started a third party. They continued fighting for racism within the party, and they eventually lost. But it wasn’t until the conservative movement had finished fully taking over the Republican Party that the great shift finished.

After devoting a lot of words to LBJ’s very real history of being a loud-mouthed racist, Williamson explains that Johnson’s dumb, loud-mouthed racism was just a reflection of the whole of Democratic Party philosophy and belief since time immemorial.

Johnson did not spring up from the Democratic soil ex nihilo. Not one Democrat in Congress voted for the Fourteenth Amendment. Not one Democrat in Congress voted for the Fifteenth Amendment. Not one voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Eisenhower, as a general, began the process of desegregating the military, and Truman, as president, formalized it, but the main reason either had to act was that President Wilson, the personification of Democratic progressivism, had resegregated previously integrated federal facilities. (“If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me, they ought to correct it,” he declared.) Klansmen from Senator Robert Byrd to Justice Hugo Black held prominent positions in the Democratic Party — and President Wilson chose the Klan epic Birth of a Nation to be the first film ever shown at the White House.

Johnson himself denounced an earlier attempt at civil-rights reform as the “nigger bill.” So what happened in 1964 to change Democrats’ minds? In fact, nothing.

What is the funniest part of this: How it basically makes one brief stop in between 1875 and the mid-20th century in its exhaustive history of Democratic racism? Or how Williamson is clearly annoyed at having to even slightly, obliquely credit Harry Truman (Democrat!) for desegregating the armed forces, a thing (Democrat) Harry Truman did? Like, maybe what happened in 1964 was the eventual result of an intraparty battle that was happening in 1948 when Democrat Harry Truman desegregated the armed forces (and Strom Thurmond, future Republican, threw a big fit about it)?

The 1964 Civil Rights Act, and Lyndon Johnson’s role in ensuring its passage, was one major victory in a years-long effort by the party’s liberals to make the Democratic Party the civil rights party, and it worked so well that the racists were effectively no longer welcome. They responded by changing their positions or changing sides. It wasn’t an overnight change, because politics is slow, but it happened: Robert Byrd and even George Wallace changed their positions on black civil rights and apologized. Those who couldn’t adapt, or those for whom bigotry was more genuine belief than political opportunism, left the party. Strom Thurmond became a Republican. Lester Maddox launched a third-party presidential bid against Jimmy Carter and eventually endorsed Republican Pat Buchanan in 1992. Maddox was also a charter member of the Council of Conservative Citizens, the white supremacist paleoconservative group that once counted Trent Lott, Thurmond and Jesse Helms as members. These guys are the heirs to the conservative white Southern Democrat tradition. I’m not really sure they themselves would consider it a pernicious lie to say as much.

What would have been much, much more entertaining would have been if, instead of writing this piece about “Democrats” and “Republicans,” Williamson had written it about liberals and conservatives. Barry Goldwater and George Wallace both used conservative rhetoric to justify their segregationist beliefs — and so did William F. Buckley. Both parties at the time had liberal and conservative wings, and in each of those parties it was the liberal wing that was right on civil rights.

There was really only one American political party with a solid record on civil rights in the first half of the 20th century, and it was the American Communist Party. But “in praise of the liberal Northeastern Republicans who stood with the communists on civil rights and who were eventually driven from the party by conservatives like the ones who founded this magazine” would not go over well in the National Review, I imagine.

Williamson goes on to argue that the white South didn’t go Republican because of civil rights, it went Republican because of … the New Deal. So while the change happened too slowly and gradually to be ascribed to racism, it can happily be pinned on a series of popular economic programs that had been enacted 30 years prior to 1964. (Programs so popular that Southern racists and blacks joined together in a political coalition that lasted until liberals began … winning civil rights victories.)

But let’s not also forget to blame hippies and welfare:

The Republican ascendancy in Dixie is associated with the rise of the southern middle class, the increasingly trenchant conservative critique of Communism and the welfare state, the Vietnam controversy and the rise of the counterculture, law-and-order concerns rooted in the urban chaos that ran rampant from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, and the incorporation of the radical Left into the Democratic Party. Individual events, especially the freak show that was the 1968 Democratic convention, helped solidify conservatives’ affiliation with the Republican Party.

In other words, it was literally everything that was going on in the 1960s besides civil rights issues that made white Southerners eventually fully embrace the Republican Party. (And blacks continue to support the Democrats because Democrats lied about what happened in the 1960s and because Johnson promised them free government money forever, apparently.)

I mean it’s obviously true that the shift didn’t happen purely because of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but it’s just as obviously true that it’s a hilarious and deeply stupid misreading of history to pretend that the Republican Party has always and will always be the champion of civil rights.

[Thanks to, and please also read: Adam Serwer, Jonathan Chait, Mark Schmitt, Clay Risen, and Jonathan Bernstein.]

For those of us who believe that there’s something seriously wrong with the Republican Party (and see Tom Mann and Norm Ornstein’s new book; see also my argument that the problem is not about how “conservative” they are, but about their radical style), the big question is whether anything can be done about it. American democracy needs two strong, solid political parties, but currently one of the parties is just a mess – incapable of making coherent policy when it’s in office, and dangerously obstructionist when it’s out of office.

So how can a party recover? I think there are three ways, but two are unfortunately quite unlikely, and the third is at best uncertain.

Some talk about the possibility that the electorate will punish Republicans for their radicalism. Unfortunately, I think that’s unlikely. Note that consecutive blowouts in 2006 and 2008 certainly didn’t make things better. Part of the problem here, too, is that elections generally don’t work that way. It’s true that the impression of ideological extremism can be costly, as Barry Goldwater and George McGovern learned the hard way, but we’re talking here about 2 or 3 percentage points in a presidential election. Direct action by the voters just isn’t enough to do it. After all, as voters, they can only choose between the nominees that they’ve been offered, and if anything voters are more partisan than ever; they’re not likely to defect just because a candidate embraces the crazy, even if they don’t like it, because they would still have a strong preference for that candidate otherwise.

A second possibility is that they’ll wind up with a successful president who sets a strong example of sane conservativism and who is strong enough within the party that he or she can push a lot of the crazies to the fringes and beyond. That could work. Presidents have limited influence in general, but one thing that a popular president can do is to define normality for his or her own party. They can reward some and punish — or at least avoid rewarding — others, creating real and meaningful incentives that can be very different from what came before. The obvious analogy is Dwight Eisenhower’s maneuverings against Joe McCarthy. The problem is that for this strategy to work it takes a skilled and popular president who decides to try it, but Republicans might have to wait a long time before they get another Ike.

So the first method probably can’t work, and the second one is unlikely to happen. That leaves one other possibility: that the Republican coalition itself might demand change. Specifically, that Republican-aligned interest groups – perhaps business, national security or others – might become upset enough with the crazy, or worried enough that the crazy will impede their ability to get things done, that they’ll push to end it. After all, part of the problem with the crazy is that it truly is random; you really never know what nonsense Limbaugh or the Breitbart sites are going to be up to next, and there’s every possibility that it could interfere with groups within the party pursuing their interests. Even worse: Politicians who believe they were elected because their most valuable allies convinced the electorate that the president was a radicalized foreigner are going to be responsive to those supporters, and not to organized party groups. Those groups have enough troubles as it is, since in the current free-for-all campaign finance environment they have to compete with random billionaires who might have all sorts of unorthodox policy preferences.

We’ve seen a little bit of this already. During the healthcare debate, many normally Republican-leaning groups chose to work with the Obama administration and cut their best deal, rather than sticking with the rejectionist GOP. Several companies quit the conservative state lobbying organization ALEC when it became controversial by lobbying for ideological and partisan goals. On the national security side, a break has emerged between the Department of Defense and movement conservatives; both conservatives who care about national security and (on some issues) businesses might choose to stick with the Pentagon. And it’s not quite the same thing, but there’s been a small but steady stream of defectors from the movement.

Nevertheless, something like this would likely play out in nomination politics, with party-aligned groups insisting on candidates who are willing to fight for their interests while rejecting the crazy, and there certainly isn’t any sign of that yet. Will it in 2014 and 2016 if Romney falls short this fall and the crazy gets even worse? I have no idea – but that’s the only path out of this that I can imagine.

The most recent evidence that the current incarnation of the Republican Party just can’t handle the truth arrived this month when House Republicans voted to get rid of the American Community Survey. The ACS is an annual information-gathering effort that’s part of the U.S. Census. Every year, a randomized sample of 3 million Americans is surveyed for data on “demographic, housing, social and economic characteristics.” In one form or another, the U.S. government has been carrying out similar surveys since 1850 — the current version is the fourth major iteration.

Most sensible people consider the ACS to be extremely useful, the kind of thing that government is really well equipped to carry out. That is not, or at least did not used to be, a partisan statement. Both private and public sector policymakers use ACS data to make important decisions. The federal government allocates $450 billion annually according, in part, to information derived from the ACS. Businesses also consider the ACS vital, which explains why the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, rarely a fan of government spending, is opposed to the House action.

Even conservative economists are leery: The clearest evidence that the House GOP has gone completely beyond the pale can be seen in a Businessweek article reporting that representatives of the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute all declared their support for government data gathering. If you don’t understand what’s going on in the U.S. economy on a granular level, you’re flying blind. This should not be a controversial statement.

Even the Wall Street Journal is appalled — although the lead sentence of its editorial criticizing the funding cuts required some remarkable calisthenics before reaching the point of disapproval.

With the contempt of the Washington establishment raining down on House Republicans for voting on principle, every now and then the GOP does something that feeds the otherwise false narrative of political extremism.

Marvelous! In one sentence, the Journal’s editorial writer manages to deny, not once, but twice, the self-evident fact that the current crop of House Republicans occupies the nethermost regions of right-wing extremism, while at the same time admitting that, yeah, well, in this one case they are indeed bonkers.

There’s been no end of media chatter focusing on the importance of the data gathered by the ACS. We’ve also heard how the Constitution specifically enjoins Congress to gather demographic information “in such a manner as they shall by law direct.” And, in fact, the current form of the ACS follows the mandate set forth by a Republican Congress in 2005.

The sponsor of the House measure, the freshman Florida Republican Daniel Webster, claims that ACS questions are too “intrusive” and “the very picture of what’s wrong in D.C.” He seems to be projecting. The very picture of what’s wrong with D.C. is exquisitely captured by daily demonstration that one of our leading political parties is dedicated to the proposition that the less we know about what is going on in our economy or on our planet, the better. If science tells us that one of the consequences of human activity is an overheated planet, then the answer is to defund climate research. If data gathered by the ACS gives us a better understanding of where poverty may be growing as a result of economic policies put into place over the past few decades, best to just to close our eyes and ignore it.

Which brings us back to the 17th century. It’s no stretch to argue that both representative democracy and the Industrial Revolution flourished in large part through the application of Enlightenment principles. The founders of the United States were very much a product of Enlightenment ideals. Looking for an Enlightenment avatar? Think Ben Franklin. Progress is built on the accumulation of knowledge, and ideological rigidity shouldn’t be able to compete against the truth that derives from a better understanding of our universe. And yet that’s where we are today — watching as one of the two major political parties in our country becomes not just more and more distrustful of science, but also opposed to the very notion of information-gathering — and governs accordingly.

At the same time, Colorado’s Republican House Speaker Frank McNulty twice blocked a vote on a bill to legalize civil unions. His rationale? “We should not be spending time on divisive social issues when unemployment remains far too high and [when] far too many Coloradans remain out of work,” he said. Echoing that sentiment, the shadowy Republican front group Compass Colorado financed an automated telephone call telling thousands of voters that the push for civil unions was unacceptable because it is “promoting [a] divisive social agenda over Colorado job creation.”

Obviously, it’s perplexing to see the Republican Party allege that social issues are insignificant and “divisive.” This is, after all, the party whose most recent presidential nominating contest was dominated by attacks on contraception — the same GOP whose politicians have made an art out of riding a “guns, god and gays”-focused agenda to electoral victory.

But while such naked hypocrisy is enraging, the substance of the Republican rhetoric about gay rights is downright offensive. Essentially, conservatives are asserting that we cannot extend equal rights to all Americans and fix the economy. In the process, they are deliberately insinuating that the twin goals are somehow contradictory.

Well, you might ask, do they have a point? History says no. Our country’s story is the story of multitasking — a tale of extending the franchise to women while passing progressive legislation to deal with crushing economic inequality, a tale of both passing civil rights legislation and creating Medicare.

In light of such achievements, would anyone retroactively argue that America should have opposed the campaign to let women vote because the economy was so bad in the early 20th century? Would anyone insist that lawmakers should have halted civil rights legislation in the 1960s because there was a simultaneous need for a War on Poverty? Probably not, because most of us recognize such arguments for what they are: diversionary non sequiturs whose real goal is to preserve institutional bigotry and prejudice.

That’s the same objective of today’s GOP when it comes to rights for same-sex couples. For proof, just consider the abruptness of the shift: the Republican Party that spent the last decade insisting that we should simultaneously cut taxes, prosecute foreign wars and fight to limit a woman’s right to choose an abortion now suddenly says we can’t even discuss equal rights because of a recession.

The language changed not because the new “can’t walk and chew gum” mantra makes sense (seriously — would any sane person really claim that a bad economy justifies continued persecution of lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender people?). It changed because the cause of equal rights is involved. And, clearly, that cause is what today’s Republicans are now most committed to stopping — no matter how much their flawed logic indicts their credibility.