Science Guide to the 2012 GOP Candidates

Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich addresses the Republican Leadership Conference on June 16, 2011 at the Hilton Riverside New Orleans.

(Image credit: Christopher Halloran | Shutterstock)

The contenders for the Republican nomination in the 2012 U.S. presidential election may appear to be a fairly uniform group of middle-aged white conservatives, but when it comes to issues of science, technology and overall geek cred, none of these candidates is cut from the same cloth. In fact, Newt Gingrich nudges out Mitt Romney and Ron Paul in Scientific American's overall ranking, based on the former Congressman's engagement in issues related to energy, the Internet and military weapons, combined with his mastery of top online tools such as Twitter and a healthy appetite for science nonfiction.

Paul is a geek contender based on his appeal to libertarian-leaning Silicon Valley, combined with his support of online freedoms, although he fails science when it comes to accepting evidence for anthropogenic climate change and evolution.

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The two things you need to know about Gingrich's geek cred is that one of his nicknames is Newt Skywalker and that he once made the cover of Wired—back in its early, weird days—in a feature written by none other than technology investor and commentator Esther Dyson. Bob Walker, a Gingrich booster and former chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Science (now the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology), said that Gingrich "would probably be the most knowledgeable president on technology issues ever elected."

Gingrich has written so much and spoken so often that it is possible to confuse the volume of his pronouncements with their frequency, but some of his ideas appear to come straight from the science fiction he has read. He has proposed using lasers against North Korea, putting mirrors in space to increase agricultural productivity, colonizing the moon, reviving a Star Wars–style orbiting missile defense system and solving climate change through geoengineering. Whereas other candidates wring their hands over the threat of Chinese currency controls, he has warned of the threat to the U.S. of that most science-fictionesque of all weapons, the electromagnetic pulse.

When it comes to science policy, Gingrich, like Romney, contends that we need to make our immigration policies friendlier to foreign students in math, science and engineering. He thinks students who graduate early should receive the cost of the year they skipped as a scholarship and that online learning should be universally available. He also wants to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency and replace it with an Environmental Solutions Agency that would consider "the impact of federal environmental policies on job creation and the cost of energy."

Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, has a "corny sense of humor," but being socially awkward is not a sufficient qualification for ascendance to the rank of geek. Still, rare glimpses of Romney in unguarded moments suggest that beneath his image as a successful businessman beats the heart of the sort of brainy young man who excelled at Harvard University. In 2007, for example, he told an interviewer that his favorite book is the science fiction schlock classic Battlefield Earth, by L. Ron Hubbard. (He was quick to add that he had no affinity for Scientology, which was founded by Hubbard.)

Romney's ties to technology and Silicon Valley are surprisingly deep for a businessman who spent most of his career on the East Coast. Speaking in Redmond, Wash., Romney was reminded that he once tried to recruit Steve Ballmer, now head of Microsoft, for a different job. In 2010 he endorsed Rick Snyder, "one tough nerd," for his father’s old job as governor of Michigan. Meg Whitman, head of Hewlett-Packard and former head of eBay, is one of his most prominent fund-raisers, and the two are so close that some have speculated she would be a part of his cabinet should he win. Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, is also among Romney's staunchest allies.

The technology portion of Romney's platform does not appear to have changed much since his run in 2008, when he said , "It is time to invest substantially in technologies related to power generation, nanotechnology and materials science." He has added provisions to his "human capital" plank that would raise existing caps on visas given to highly skilled workers, as well as grant permanent residency to graduates with advanced degrees in math, science and engineering.

When it comes to the environment, Romney hews to the party line, which ranges from tilting EPA rules heavily in favor of the industries it regulates (Romney) to transforming the entire agency into a smoldering heap of ashes and greenhouse gas emissions (Paul and Michele Bachmann). Specifically, Romney would like environmental regulations to be "treated like the very real costs they are," with "a regulatory cap of zero dollars on all federal agencies."

Compared with the wider public, geeks are certainly over-represented among Paul's supporters and donors. He exhibits no particular tech savvy himself—and shows an occasionally striking disconnect from popular culture. But in terms of popularity, Paul dominated the Internet early, starting in the 2008 election, during which technology was the most represented industry among his donors. He is the only current GOP candidate to have spoken at the Googleplex, where he was warmly received.

When it comes to policy, Paul is notable for what he proposes to eliminate rather than for what he wants to add or remake in the federal budget. This characteristic makes it difficult to compare him with Romney and Gingrich, who have promised to support basic research despite overall cuts in discretionary spending. Whether or not Paul's policies are proinnovation depends on whether you think existing regulations and subsidies help or hinder the U.S.’s ability to bring new ideas to market.

For example, Paul is against putting a price on carbon emissions, something that climate policy experts and more than a few multinational companies are nearly unanimous in supporting. This view is at least congruent with his belief that human-caused climate change is a hoax, which puts him at odds with pretty much every climate scientist on the planet and the majority of the U .S . public. He would eliminate the EPA and encourage victims to use the courts to punish polluters instead.

For geeks with an interest in privacy, Paul is unique among his peers in his ardent support of online freedoms. He is against national ID systems and universal health records, and he favors legalization of some drugs. In other words, it is hard to imagine President Paul signing any bills that would, for example, interfere with fans of cryptographic currency Bitcoin using it to buy whatever they like, even if it is mind-altering.

Perry is not a geek. Given his hardscrabble upbringing in Texas and subsequent tour of duty as an Air Force flight jock, the candidate appears to be the mold that no one realized former president George W. Bush was attempting to pour himself into. Perry dropped out of the pre-vet track in college in the face of organic chemistry. Without confusing secular humanism and geekiness, it is worth noting that he is very public about how faith has shaped his worldview.

Confusion in Perry's assessment of the climate and energy nexus extends to his energy plan, which says that "we must continue to invest in clean coal technology through research and development tax incentives." If, as Perry has claimed, climate change is a baseless hoax, it makes no sense that he should advocate for a technology explicitly designed to capture and sequester carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants for the sole purpose of averting the warming effect of those emissions.

Perry wants to cut the size of the Department of Education in half by consolidating its functions, and his energy policy is big on states' rights and freeing oil and gas companies to access existing resources. Texas has more wind power than any other state in the nation (and therefore almost every other country on Earth), so it is worth noting that his hands-off approach—for example, Texas has a deregulated energy market—has not hurt that industry in his home state.

That said, Santorum did once compare the war in Iraq with the Lord of the Rings trilogy in an analogy that showed that he saw the movies, if not read the books. His platform is a near-perfect distillation of the policies at the intersection of those espoused by Gingrich and Romney, except for what is apparently a nod to his belief that Net neutrality is a bad idea—a view he shares with Paul and Bachmann.

Bachmann stands out for having torpedoed her chances at the nomination by advocating for bad science. She claimed that the vaccine against HPV that Perry made mandatory during his tenure as governor of Texas leads to mental disability. Doctors were so incensed they offered a reward for proof of her claims, and scientists said her statements had set back public understanding and acceptance of the vaccine by years.