One great reason why Republican politicians should be barred from science committees

1. They are partisan idiots.

No, really. I mean, Noam Sheiber takes this charge seriously:

“What if House members are trying to act in their self-interest [but] they’re just exceptionally bad at figuring out what that is? What if they’re, you know, kinda dumb? For example, if you’re a House Republican, presumably you have some policy preferences: You’d like to massively cut taxes for the wealthy, you’d like to slash spending for the poor, you’d like to privatize Social Security and voucherize Medicare. In short, you’d like to enact the Ryan plan in its full, Randian glory. But, of course, there’s no way to do that as long as there’s a Democrat in the White House. And, unfortunately, as long as you’re committed to acting crazy—threatening needless government shutdowns; insisting that Obamacare is the greatest assault on freedom since the Nazi march across Europe; failing to fix massive electoral liabilities, like your perceived hostility to Latinos—you may preserve your House majority. But it’s going to be damn-near impossible for a Republican to win the presidency.”

Think Sheiber's exaggerating with that Nazi reference? Check this news story:

The South Carolina Republican Party called the Internal Revenue Service “Obama’s Gestapo” in a fundraising email on Tuesday in yet another reference to Adolf Hitler by one of the state’s two major political parties.

You know, "partisan idiots" is almost praise for these folks.