The GOP is probably concerned that the Tea Party will split the vote in coming elections, which would benefit Democrat candidates. This could be an indicator that the GOP has decided that trying to rein the Tea Party in hasn't worked and it's time to draw a line in the sand, in the hopes that they can limit the damage to the near term.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
