"Political objectives" like getting themselves a fair hearing? If so, what's wrong with that?
As for the alleged untestability of ID, perhaps you're right. I don't know. But I do know that I find it interesting and a useful contribution to the debate over man's origins. "Untestable" doesn't necessarily mean false.
Maybe not. But it does mean unscientific.
Interesting, maybe, but "useful", probably not. If it were actually "useful", it would be testable. Something is testable when it has detectable consequences which can be examined. An idea without consequences is pretty much "useless" by definition. It's just ivory-tower blue-skying, fit for at most late-night dormroom bull sessions after a few too many beers.
"Untestable" doesn't necessarily mean false.
That cuts both ways -- it doesn't necessarily mean true either. And being untestable, it not only can't be determined whether it's true or not, it doesn't *matter* if it is or not (again, because in order to matter, it has to make some sort of difference to some aspect of the real world, but untestable notions don't -- if they did, they'd be *testable*).
A fair hearing? There is not a single idea advance bu Behe that wasn't published in William paley's "Natural Theology" in 1802. In fact, most of Darwin's writing was in direct response to Paley.
As for a fair hearing, the scientific establishement resisted Darwin for 80 years (accepting evolution, but rejecting natural selection). Every possible hedge around natural selection was tried, by hundreds of the brightest people in biology.
Among these opponents was the old flame thrower, T.H. Huxley himself. Today there are several theories of how variation occurs (all of which may be right) but all variation is subject to selection.