Doubts about Perry’s intellect have hounded him since he was first elected as a state legislator nearly three decades ago. In Austin, he’s been derided as a right-place, right-time pol who looks the part but isn’t so deep – “Gov. Goodhair.” Now, with the chatter picking back up among his enemies and taking flight in elite Republican circles, the rap threatens to follow him to the national stage.
“He’s like Bush only without the brains,” cracked one former Republican governor who knows Perry, repeating a joke that has made the rounds . . .Didn't the media also question whether Bush had brains? I recall plenty of similar stories written about Bush when he first ran against Al Gore in 2000 and during his re-election campaign against John Kerry. When the Yale grade transcripts of both Bush and Kerry were made public, we learned that both were mediocre students with Bush earning a slightly higher GPA than Kerry. When John McCain ran against Obama in 2008, the media gladly reported that his grade transcripts from the U.S. Naval Academy showed he graduated near the bottom of his class. Rick Perry's grade transcripts from Texas A&M were publicly revealed before he even announced his campaign for president to make the case he was a poor student. Who knows what Obama's grades looked like in college? They remain under lock and seal for some strange reason. There is obviously something that Obama is hiding in his college records; otherwise, they would have long ago been made public.
UPDATE: Jack Cashill stumbled across a letter Barack Obama wrote while he was serving as editor of the Harvard Law Review in which he defended the school's affirmative action policy. Not surprisingly, Cashill found the letter was chock-full of grammatical errors.
11 comments:
Undeniably, Republicans are the current home of anti-intellectualism. If you post for any time in a core Republican Internet forum, you'll be insulted if your spelling is meticulous, your words well chosen, your references reveal education, and your arguments are anything but reflexive.
For Republicans, the less educated, the more reflexive, the more doctrinaire, the less contemplative, the better. The more you find definitive answers in myth proves your suitability for the office.
It takes a certain level of stupidity, or perhaps wilful ignorance, to find the rigidity of Republican ideology appealing.
This rabid fundamentalism that has found a home in the GOP has not improved the party's mean IQ. if you're a lover of literature, art or music, you're more likely to be a Democrat. If Country Music doesn't make your skin crawl, you're more likely to be a Republican.
When you pray for rain to save your state from drought, you can't expect to be seen as a leading intellectual light.
In a race to solve a crossword, who would you bet on, Bill Clinton or Rick Perry?
In meandering about the Internet, I happened on this article which contains a passage that redoubles my point that the Republicans positively eschew intellect:
"In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/attention-governor-perry-evolution-is-a-fact/2011/08/23/gIQAuIFUYJ_blog.html
The Republicans truly have become the party of the superstitious, the unthinking, the martial, the intolerant, the closed-minded.
Cato, You have demonstrated quite often through your prior posts on your own intellectual shortcomings. You're hardly one to be categorizing an entire political party as lacking intellect.
Suffice it to say that both political parties leave a lot to be desired in the people they promote within their ranks. Neither party has a leg up on the other in that regard.
Cato says: "The Republicans truly have become the party of the superstitious, the unthinking, the martial, the intolerant, the closed-minded."
Liberals: Global warming and evolution (superstitious and unthinking), Liberals: abortion (unloving, intolerant and closed-minded), Liberals: Hate filled rants by Cato (unthinking, intolerant and close-minded)
I'm sure most liberals are tolerant of Christians and small government types....hardly.
They always say the GOP candidates are stupid...
IKE, Goldwater, Ford, Reagan, W.
The Left isnt very tolerant of candidates who dont come from Ivory Towers.
Gary,
Many of us who are fiscal conservatives or moderates look at some of the nonsense out of the Republican party - esp right now -- and are appalled.
Cato is correct about the ant-intellectualism, not in the Right in general, but in the candidates for higher office and much of the party base.
I have a high regard for science, for facts,and for empirical testing. I have no use for people who want to bring their religion into the policy arena.
As for your ad hominem attack on Cato -- last time I checked,Cato wasn't a candidate for President.
That would be 'chocked-full' not 'chalked full.'
;-)
My bad. Thanks for the correction.
It seems obvious to me that the Republican Party has some very intelligent people. Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and John Huntsman are clearly very intelligent, articulate individuals. If none of them win the nomination, does that mean Republicans prefer stupid candidates? Only to the extend that having Biden on the Democratic ticket proves the same.
There is no proof that Obama is a person with a high IQ. Again, he refuses to divulge any of his transcripts from college or law school as other presidential candidates have done in the past. It could be that he was enrolled in college as a foreign student, which explains why he didn't have any federal student loan debt when he graduated, notwithstanding his false claims to the contrary. His Harvard law education was financed by a Saudi billionaire prince. He'll probably be long dead before the records are released by the government that prove he was employed as a contract employee by the CIA fresh out of school. We know his first employer out of Columbia was a CIA front company. For some mysterious reason, the Omedia refuses to ask of him any questions they always expect other presidential candidates to answer.
The comments about Perry being dumb are coming primarily from Republicans and not the liberal boogeymen.
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