I'd say it's more like cognitive dissonance on the part of educated creationists. They have to reconcile the fact that they live in the modern world with the fact that they believe in something that has no place in it.

I don't see a flood of educated creationists embracing intelligent design in its common forms.

No? In my experience intelligent design proponents tend to be better educated than plain old creationists. Moreover in environments where most people embrace science, you are much more likely to find an IDer than a creationist. Intelligent design makes it possible for people to keep their crufty notions without feeling like troglodytes. But since it really is just a slim veneer of jingoist science, on some level they still feel insecure about it, which is why they need official institutions to recognize it.

Of course there some people who consciously use intelligent design to get creationism back into the classroom, but I don't think that the majority of people who subscribe to it are so calculating.

Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by psychology.

Now I'm curious. Are there any real biologists promoting this?

More than just think, we know that it's a conspiracy, and we have the proof: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_document

Maybe you know. I suspect. Don't "we" me!

Thanks for the link though.

"We" know insomuch as the Discovery Institute wrote a document setting forth Intelligent Design as a method to do an end-run around the establishment clause and get Creationism into the classroom, and then later admitted that they wrote that document. What's left to suspect?

The theory may not specify the designer, but I'd be impressed if you can find me one person who supports intelligent design, who does not have a personal belief about who that designer is.

Depends on how you define "personal belief" because Deists believe in a "Intelligent Design" (The non-conspiracy version), but have a very lose definition of what god is or isn't.