The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party - Mischa Fisher - The Atlantic:
There is a second, larger reason why it's important to keep science bipartisan—and why cheap shots about Republicans and science are dangerous. The politics of the immediate will always trump the politics of the long term. So actions like the sequester, which left entitlements untouched but caused furloughs at NASA and the Office of Science, stalled research at the National Institutes of Health, and reduced grants from the NSF and other federally supported research agencies—will happen again and again absent tax and spending reform. If the sequester taught us anything, it's that science will always lose to Social Security, Medicare, and defense when budgets are being cut.
Science's political constituency is too small and the coalition supporting it is not powerful enough to protect research budgets against other priorities. Supporters of federal science funding, a group of which I am a card-carrying member, can ill afford to lose Republican support for science. But if it is perceived as a partisan litmus test, it will not continue to exist in its current state as the government's other financial obligations continue to grow. This may be stupid or petty and perhaps it ought not to matter whether or not it's perceived as a partisan issue, but I've been on the Hill and this is how politics works.
If we do not expand the pro-science coalition, instead of shrinking it, it will be the death knell for American leadership in science. Every American will be worse off as a result. Science funding will not just shrink as a percentage—it will shrink in absolute terms, as it did under the sequester.