I request to answer my question in red color in the following passage.
Earlier this week, GQ magazine published an interview with Senator Marco Rubio, whom many consider a contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, in which Mr. Rubio was asked how old the earth is. After declaring “I’m not a scientist, man,” the senator went into desperate evasive action, ending with the declaration that “it’s one of the great mysteries.”
It’s funny stuff, and conservatives [color=red][Should I use “that” here?] would like us to forget about it as soon as possible. Hey, they say, he was just pandering to likely voters in the 2016 Republican primaries — a claim that for some reason is supposed to comfort us.
But we shouldn’t let go that easily[color=red][What should we not let go?]. Reading Mr. Rubio’s interview is like driving through a deeply eroded canyon; all at once, you can clearly see what lies below the superficial landscape. Like striated rock beds that speak of deep time[color=red][What is it?], his inability to acknowledge scientific evidence speaks of the anti-rational mind-set[color=red][What is it?] that has taken over his political party[color=red][I can’t work out the bold part?].
By the way, that question didn’t come out of the blue[color=red][What is “the blue”?]. As speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, Mr. Rubio provided powerful aid to creationists trying to water down science education. In one interview, he compared the teaching of evolution to Communist indoctrination tactics[color=red][What is it?] — although he graciously added that “I’m not equating the evolution people with Fidel Castro.” Gee, thanks.
What was Mr. Rubio’s complaint about science teaching? That it might undermine children’s faith in what their parents told them to believe. And right there you have the modern G.O.P.’s attitude, not just toward biology, but toward everything: If evidence seems to contradict faith, suppress the evidence.[color=red][I can’t work out the sentence I request someone to explain it to me.]
The most obvious example other than evolution is man-made climate change. As the evidence for a warming planet becomes ever stronger — and ever scarier — the G.O.P. has buried deeper into denial, into assertions that the whole thing is a hoax concocted by a vast conspiracy of scientists. And this denial has been accompanied by frantic efforts to silence and punish anyone reporting the inconvenient facts.
But the same phenomenon is visible in many other fields. The most recent demonstration came in the matter of election polls. Coming into the recent election, state-level polling clearly pointed to an Obama victory — yet more or less the whole Republican Party refused to acknowledge this reality. Instead, pundits and politicians alike fiercely denied the numbers[color=red][What is “the numbers”?] and personally attacked anyone pointing out the obvious; the demonizing of The Times’s Nate Silver, in particular, was remarkable to behold[color=red][I can’t work out the underlined part. Could someone please explain it to me?].
What accounts for this pattern of denial? Earlier this year, the science writer Chris Mooney published “The Republican Brain,” which was not, as you might think, a partisan screed. It was, instead, a survey of the now-extensive research linking political views to personality types[color=red][What does the bold part suggest?]. As Mr. Mooney showed, modern American conservatism is highly correlated with authoritarian inclinations — and authoritarians are strongly inclined to reject any evidence contradicting their prior beliefs. Today’s Republicans cocoon themselves in an alternate reality defined by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, and only on rare occasions — like on election night — encounter[color=red][What is the subject of the verb?] any hint that what they believe might not be true.
And, no, it’s not symmetric. Liberals, being human, often give in to wishful thinking — but not in the same systematic, all-encompassing way.[color=red][What does symmetric suggest here and what is the summary of the writing?]
Coming back to the age of the earth: Does it matter?[color=red][What is ‘matter’?] No, says Mr. Rubio, pronouncing it “a dispute amongst theologians” — what about the geologists?[color=red][What does “what about the geologists?” suggest?] — that has “has[color=red][I feel very difficult with this has combination.] nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States.” But he couldn’t be more wrong.[color=red][why couldn’t he be wrong?]
We are, after all, living in an era when science plays a crucial economic role. How are we going to search effectively for natural resources if schools trying to teach modern geology must give equal time to claims that the world is only 6.000 years old? How are we going to stay competitive in biotechnology if biology classes avoid any material that might offend creationists?
And[color=red][What does “and” suggest?] then there’s the matter of using evidence to shape economic policy. You may have read about the recent study from the Congressional Research Service finding no empirical support for the dogma[color=red][what does it suggest?] that cutting taxes[color=red][Does it mean reducing tax?] on the wealthy leads to higher economic growth. How did Republicans respond? By suppressing the report.[color=red][What does the underlined part suggest?] On economics, as in hard science, modern conservatives don’t want to hear anything challenging their preconceptions — and they don’t want anyone else to hear about it, either.
So don’t shrug off Mr. Rubio’s awkward moment. His inability to deal with geological evidence was symptomatic of a much broader problem — one that may, in the end, set America on a path of inexorable decline.[color=red][I can’t work out this part. I request to explain it to me?]