Why do Republicans hate the NSF?

I hadn't closely examined the spending cuts proposed by Rand Paul, but a reader at The Daily Dish made this comment:

What struck me most about the Rand Paul’s budget proposals were the extremely deep cuts to the National Science Foundation (62% !?).   This is in addition to significant cuts to the National Institute of Health,  the Centers for Disease Control,  abolition of the Department of Energy.  The Rand Paul budget would be a devastating blow to the sciences in the United States of America.
What is striking (and some of this may be due to omissions in the Washington Examiner article) are the choices of things that are not touched:  Agriculture subsidies (direct farm payments are about $20B annually versus $7B for the entire NSF budgets),  subsidies for oil,  gas or coal, etc.   These are things that Paul apparently feels are more important ways to spend money than basic sciences.

Now this isn't the first time that I've seen Republicans proposing cuts to the National Science Foundation.  Is $7 billion a year spent on science research extremely wasteful?  That's about $25 per person in the US.  I mean, $100 wouldn't even get a family of four into Kings Island.  Why is this a target for cuts?  I knew a couple of guys who got NSF grants, and I can say, they were pretty darn smart.  I'd take a risk on investing in what they were working on.  I'd guess we spend $7 billion a year in Afghanistan and Iraq fixing things we blew up.  My recommendation would be to keep investing in the NSF, and stop blowing shit up in other countries.