Why Republicans Embrace Simpletons and How it Hurts America

[Stuckinthebush]

http://news.yahoo.com/why-republicans-embrace-simpletons-hurts-america-192501947.html

Since I report on American education, including the intellectual lassitude of American voters, foreign observers routinely ask me: Why Do Republicans Gleefully Embrace Idiots as Presidential Candidates?

The question naturally begs a larger question: How can a country, with the world’s highest national GDP, and absurdly complex systems regulating everything from credit default swaps to nuclear missile safety, possibly allow onto its national stage men and women of such transparently inferior intellect?

The easy answer is that there has always been a long, pathetic history of anti-intellectual paranoia in American politics, as Richard Hofstadter documented in his book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963). It is like kudzu. You just can’t kill it. No matter how advanced the U.S. becomes in technology, biomedicine, and weaponry, it not only attracts, but promotes, under the rubric of equal opportunity, a confederacy of dunces as Presidential candidates.

{snip}

[mwb970]

1. I've always wondered about this.

The current crop of republican candidates simply can't be the very best that modern conservatism has to offer. Can they?

[izquierdista]

7. Like follows like

Stupid is as stupid does.

[freshwest]

11. Nah. The GOP can't find enough good actors to parrot their nonsensical corporate line.

It's actually a good thing that anyone with half a brain who is even halfway awake can't read that bullshit anymore with a straight face. So they are forcing to use those rejected by central casting, and they still lose in the end as more people see the brain trust has left.

[ladjf]

2. I think that the 1% promotes the intellectual dunces because they

are the "bell cows" that entice the unenlightened voting constituency to the Republican Party. Once in power, the Republican Party and many Democrats as well do their "masters" bidding.

[Martin Eden]

3. I think you're right

The answer to most questions of this sort is in who stands to gain from it.

[rurallib]

4. Plus they are more easily controlled by those with the REAL power

I am looking at you, Charles and David.

[truth2power]

12. This is the exact reason why I've always said Sarah Palin would never

have gotten the nod. Even though she's bone-stupid, she marches to her own drumbeat and doesn't take well to following orders. TPTB would have an impossible job trying to direct her energies in any productive direction that would serve their interests.

Michele Bachman, on the other hand, is ignorant, but crafty enough to see where her interests lie and to do what's necessary to get what she wants (the presidency, in this case.)

In any case, the President of the U.S. is no longer anything but a cipher. No matter who sits in the Oval Office - Obama or any of the assorted Republican fools that currently aspire to that position - they'll take their orders from the moneyed interests that control everything.

I hope the Occupy movement can endure.

[Tesha]

5. Conservatives have been shown to be more-comfortable dealing with black and white...

...rather than shades of grey. This characteristic is
(of seeing things as black or white, true or false,
one or zero) is comfortable to the simple-minded
whereas it takes a certain subtlety of mind and
outlook to see things as multi-valued (especially
where a system can be multi-valued simultaneously).

So the Rubes are drawn to conservatism/Republicanism
and conservatives/Republicans are drawn to the Rubes
(or at least to those people who offer easy answers,
even if the answers are easily provable as false).

Tesha

[geckosfeet]

6. As George Carlin said, they don't want an educated population. They only need

people who can be trained to do the paperwork and push the buttons.

Independent thinkers need not apply.

[Scuba]

8. "transparently inferior intellect" describes them to a Tee. n/t

[jwirr]

9. People like raygun and others since then are endorsed by the big

corporations because it is not them who run the show. Poppie booosh ran it back then and cheney ran sonnies show. They do not care who the front man is - even Cain will do. We do not have an elected democracy anymore - remember?

[oldhippydude]

16. also

the media environment demands that a campaign be more like a tv series than any reality..witness the continuing drama of the GOP debate... how many episodes, sort of like the ultimate survivor series..

years ago if someone proposed a batshit crazy idea it would be shot down.. today stuff that bares no link to reality gets accepted as fact..thus religion trumps sience, and crap like 999 gets trumpeted around teh world.. blame the corporate media, and right wing radio for a lot of that.. after all how many GOP folks will tell you "if you reduce taxes revenues go up".. this has been repeated ad infinitum since the Reagan years, even though it never was true, and doesent stand up to analysis..

part of this is that the media is either dishonest, lazy, or complicite... most likely a combination... the result is the same a population denied the facts..

(sorry folks im dyslexic, and the spell checker takes forever)..

[jwirr]

18. You are absolutely correct. Don't you miss the old days - I do.

[truth2power]

10. Good article! What's the matter with Forbes' print function? You'd think

those business people could organize this. I had to painfully reconstruct it in MS Word, minus the YouTube videos, text that runs off the page, and the friggin' Yahoo ads that cover the text.

:rant:

[Stuckinthebush]

14. I hate those ads!

It is maddening. Yes, you would think Forbes could do a better job. Go figure.

[Populist_Prole]

13. Kick and Recommend. Great answers so far. It's easier to sway with identity politics

Sports team mentality. It could well be that some are capable of seeing the holes in their philosophy, but if someone has painted themselves into a corner by being such a firebrand for their "team", they can't go back.

[meow2u3]

15. The reason is as simple as the simpletons themselves

Republicans are fools, and fools seldom differ.

[blkmusclmachine]

17. The dullards need representin', too. So they flock to the Christofascist Party:

But seriously, BOTH parties are the parties of Big Money. They each slap on a different face for the public, to keep us divided and fighting one another, and not recognizing our common interests and plights. It's a total sham.

[KG]

19. seems to me more a matter of simpletons embracing republicans

[Blue Owl]

20. Repukes and Simpletons: Mutually Inclusive.

n/t

[provis99]

21. the lying author called Strom Thurmond a Democrat.

Claiming that Democrats produce idiots, too. Well, Thurmond was a Dixiecrat, ie. Conservative Democrat, and became a Republican for most of his elected life. That makes Thurmond a conservative and a Republican, not a liberal Democrat.

[Stuckinthebush]

22. Yeah, I caught that too

I guess that was the author trying to find examples who are/were Democrats. I think it speaks volumes about how the Dems really don't have a lot of idiotic politicians. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting an ignorant Republican candidate. Not so much with the Dems.

[Name removed]

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