The GOP's and Tea Party's Embrace of Ignorance

Once being intelligent was something that one would strive for and before making public statements or entering into a debate one would try to read up on the issues. Not anymore in today's GOP and its Tea Party offshoot. Indeed, the dumber and more ignorant one is, the more the GOP base and the disaffected loons in the Tea Party are likely to swear allegiance and give out adulation. This rejection of knowledge and objective facts is indeed frightening, but perhaps not surprising since the GOP has become more and more a sectarian party dominated by conservative Christians, Catholics and Mormons who cling to 12th century knowledge and do everything short of advocating that the world is flat and that the sun orbits the earth. WTF happened to the once intellectual leaning party known for the educated country club Republican? Maureen Dowd has a column in the New York Times that looks at this scary phenomenon which shows no signs of abating. As the rest of the world moves into the 21st century, American seems Hell bent to return to the Middle Ages intellectually. Here are some highlights:
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Palin, has made ignorance fashionable.

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You struggle to name Supreme Court cases, newspapers you read and even founding fathers you admire? No problem. You endorse a candidate for the Pennsylvania Senate seat who is the nominee in West Virginia? Oh, well.
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At least you’re not one of those “spineless” elites with an Ivy League education, like President Obama, who can’t feel anything. It’s news to Christine O’Donnell that the Constitution guarantees separation of church and state. It’s news to Joe Miller, whose guards handcuffed a journalist, and to Carl Paladino, who threatened The New York Post’s Fred Dicker, that the First Amendment exists, even in Tea Party Land. Michele Bachmann calls Smoot-Hawley Hoot-Smalley.
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Sharron Angle sank to new lows of obliviousness when she told a classroom of Hispanic kids in Las Vegas: “Some of you look a little more Asian to me.”
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On Saturday, at a G.O.P. rally in Anaheim, Calif., Palin mockingly noted that you won’t find her invoking Mao or Saul Alinsky. She says she believes in American exceptionalism. But when it comes to the people running the country, exceptionalism is suspect; leaders should be — as Palin, O’Donnell and Angle keep saying — just like you.
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In Marilyn[Monroe]'s America, there were aspirations. The studios tackled literary novels rather than one-liners like “He’s Just Not That Into You” and navel-gazing drivel like “Eat Pray Love.” Walt Disney’s “Fantasia” paired cartoon characters with famous composers. Even Bugs Bunny did Wagner.
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But in Sarah’s America, we’ve refudiated all that.

Palin Is Ready? Oh Please, Get Real.

UPDATED 9/29/08: This from the Washigton Post:

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While some journalists say privately they are censoring their comments about Palin to avoid looking like they're piling on, pundits on the right are jumping ship. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough says Palin "just seems out of her league." National Review Editor Rich Lowry called her performance "dreadful." Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher described the interview as a "train wreck." Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker urged Palin to quit the race, saying: "If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself."

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Several people have disagreed with Katleen Parker's call for Sarah Palin to leave the GOP ticket and tried to depict Palin as a libertarian. This analysis is flawed because it ignores the facts that (1) Libertarians do not support intermixing religion and politics (the Cato Institute filed an amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas in support of striking down the sodomy statutes, and (2) believe in getting government out of the lives of citizens. McCain/Palin in effect subscribe to four (4) more years of the Chimperator's regime and Palin is a far right religious zealot from what information is available about her past church affiliations and statements. Now, Fareed Zakaria, hardly an ultra liberal is likewise calling for Palin to go away. Perhaps the scariest thing is that Palin doesn't seem to know she's out of her league in true dogmatic Christianist fashion. Here are highlights from Newsweek:

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Will someone please put Sarah Palin out of her agony? Is it too much to ask that she come to realize that she wants, in that wonderful phrase in American politics, "to spend more time with her family"? Having stayed in purdah for weeks, she finally agreed to a third interview. CBS's Katie Couric questioned her in her trademark sympathetic style. It didn't help.

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But the more Palin talks, the more we see that it may not be sexism but common sense that's causing the McCain campaign to treat her like a time bomb. Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president. She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start.

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In these times, for John McCain to have chosen this person to be his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible. McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, it is simply not true.