2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumHow the ‘Stupid Party’ Created Donald Trump - By MAX BOOT
Its hard to know exactly when the Republican Party assumed the mantle of the stupid party.
Stupidity is not an accusation that could be hurled against such prominent early Republicans as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root and Charles Evans Hughes. But by the 1950s, it had become an established shibboleth that the eggheads were for Adlai Stevenson and the boobs for Dwight D. Eisenhower a view endorsed by Richard Hofstadters 1963 book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, which contrasted Stevenson, a politician of uncommon mind and style, whose appeal to intellectuals overshadowed anything in recent history, with Eisenhower conventional in mind, relatively inarticulate. The John F. Kennedy presidency, with its glittering court of Camelot, cemented the impression that it was the Democrats who represented the thinking men and women of America.
Rather than run away from the anti-intellectual label, Republicans embraced it for their own political purposes. In his time for choosing speech, Ronald Reagan said that the issue in the 1964 election was whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant Capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. Richard M. Nixon appealed to the silent majority and the hard hats, while his vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, issued slashing attacks on an effete core of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.
William F. Buckley Jr. famously said, I should sooner live in a society governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the 2,000 faculty members of Harvard University. More recently, George W. Bush joked at a Yale commencement: To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say, well done. And to the C students I say, you, too, can be president of the United States.
Many Democrats took all this at face value and congratulated themselves for being smarter than the benighted Republicans. Heres the thing, though: The Republican embrace of anti-intellectualism was, to a large extent, a put-on. At least until now.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/01/opinion/how-the-stupid-party-created-donald-trump.html?partner=IFTTT&_r=0
uponit7771
(90,370 posts)Cosmocat
(14,579 posts)I have seen a degradation of that bubble.
In the 90s, they actually tried to put an intellectual veneer to their bullshit with tightly wound "talking" points about the constitution, states rights, etc.
In the 2000s, they took a big step backward with 9-11, not bothering to try to provide any rationale for things, just bullying everyone with "you are either with us or the terrorists!" Even things that had nothing to do with security, they screamed YOU DON'T CRITICIZE A COMMANDER IN CHIEF WITH TROOPS IN THE FIELD!"
BHO got elected, and we have literally never heard that phrase from the moment he got into the Oval Office, and it started on the current path of out and out childlike hatred. They don't even care if what they scream about contradicts what they were screaming about the day before.
Which has given birth to what we have now.
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)out and just does one incredibly stupid thing after another. They just can't seem to help themselves. So many of them go to excellent colleges, and then they just get into politics and just act fucking DUMB.
uponit7771
(90,370 posts)... on how K-12 see tRump as the bad guy... well yeah, he does everything a bad guy in their movies does !!!
NewJeffCT
(56,829 posts)not to mention most of the country's newspapers...
Weren't Romney's inner circle convinced he was going to win easily on election night? Because they had become so insulated inside the RW echo chamber bubble that they went against extremely reliable sources like 538 and Sam Wang's Princeton consortium and believed RW sourcers and pollsters.
uponit7771
(90,370 posts)... not untruthful..
Well the opposite of not untruthful is ... TRUTHFUL !!
Damn, its like they get group think and can't get out of it
Xipe Totec
(43,892 posts)It is a very old, very effective strategy.
While the NYT speaks to the the well educated, Trump speaks to the unwashed masses in the only language they understand; grunts and snorts.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1322135
Cosmocat
(14,579 posts)there are more rubes than not, and sadly, the stupid grows exponentially in groups.
groundloop
(11,529 posts)The Party of Stupid scares the hell out of me. What a total and utter contrast between President & Michelle Obama and Donald & Melania Trump. On one hand we see well educated, caring, articulate adults and on the other hand we have narcissistic, racists who aren't smart enough to check a speech for plagiarism.
God help us if Donald Trump should find a way into the White House.
QC
(26,371 posts)who are now crying about how those awful tacky people whose prejudices they cultivated over the decades have now acted according to those prejudices.
Cry me a river.
QC
(26,371 posts)Now they both claim to be horrified by their own handiwork.
Frankenstein, own monster, destroyed by, etc.
Orsino
(37,428 posts)They ran a dozen undistinguished and indistinguishable corporate boot-lickers without charisma. The rank-and-file were sitting ducks for a candidate with a personality--even the personality of a spoiled, rabid twelve-year-old. That he has a measurable pulse seems to promise that he might actually do something in office, when he has objectively done the least of any of them.
Scurrilous
(38,687 posts)treestar
(82,383 posts)Said about Reagan too. Why do that? Have someone who can do the work itself. Stupid Republicans.
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(108,359 posts)"I don't have none of that fancy pants learnin'"