Reality detachment and the Republican party

So we've got large portions of the Republican party not recognizing the reality of evolution and global warming, and now we can add plate tectonics and President Obama being a US citizen to the mix. A Daily Kos/Research 2000 Poll found that only 42% of Republicans believe Obama was born in the United States (as opposed to 77% of those polled) and only 24% believing that America and Africa were once part of the same continent (as opposed to 42% of all polled; itself an unimpressive figure).

John Quiggin, noting the overlap between AGW deniers and Obama birth certificate deniers in the Republican party, snarks

But I wouldn’t want to give the impression that over 50 per cent of Republicans are conspiracy theorists who believe in a secret plot to impose a Kenyan-socialist dictatorship as part of the UN/IPCC system of world government. On the contrary, the proportion is only about 25 per cent (more in the South). As on the global warming issue, the balance of opinion within the Republican Party holds to the sensible “sceptical” position: the science isn’t settled, the birth records are unclear, sightings of black helicopters need further investigation and so on. That’s good to know.