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What I still don't understand is, why is your Republican Party embroiled in this? Over here, the Conservative Party is staunch in its support of both enterprise and science--how can you support one without the other?

You've got two main contributers to this issue (in my estimation). One, the poor state of basic scientific education. I do not mean what is the scientific method. The SM is important, but merely memorizing the steps and not fully grasping the application of it is pointless. The basic philosophy of science that underlies good scientific reasoning is also not even mentioned, discussed, or elluded to in basic education; so you'll have mainstream newspapers proclaiming that science has proven something or the other. Nevermind science is not in the business of proving anything. There is evidence for a theory or claim, and degrees of confidence that should accompany that evidence, but there isn't definitive proof of anything. This hurts the scientific enterprise when something is "disproven", say the recent trend of serious psychologists to reject multiple-personality disorder's either prevalence (because a huge portion of the case are diagnosed by a very few doctors) or existence or something along the lines of diety discoveries (omega-3 fatty acids' benefit for the heart have recently been called into question). So people cannot even understand what is being told to them, and absolutely do not have a justifiable critical eye towards such matters.

The second big issue is political power. It is relatively easy to try to gain the support of the fundamentalist Right in America. The Republican party has been exploiting the fundamentalists' distrust of liberals and been milking that support through talking points. So now you have so many people who once hearing the word "evolution" immediately shut down all rational thought (this nasty problem effects both sides of the issue). "Evolution", "abortion", "family values", "morality" BAM. You've either got the support of a portion of America (that seems to be in the majority) or you've alienated the other big portion. These people have short attention spans, and little foresight for what problems may arise from their positions down the road (e.g. cutting federal grants into both applied research, like medicine or whatnot, and to pure research will most likely result in a lack of innovation down the road; but of course this outcome is not absolutely certain).

The Republican party has been exploiting the fundamentalists' distrust of liberals

Well, I that's a distrust I both understand and share! Over here, we've had the socialists in power since 1997!

Thanks, btw, for your post, which is of interest. It seems to me there is a variety of polarisation in the American political scene that could do long-term damage to the basic cause of freedom, not just in the USA, but in the wider world as well. Here's wishing you good luck!