Ah, how the Republican base is increasingly winnowing down to the loonies.

No wonder most right-leaning folks I know have, in recent years, hastened to call themselves "libertarian" or "independent." Who wants to be associated with this bullshit?

And I adore how the rank-and-file wingnuts in the shrinking choir that Gingrich et al is preaching to decries "political correctness" and affirmative action ... as if the good 'ol boy network ever did poor white people any favors either.

As long as Gingrich & Limbaugh can keep convincing their listeners to hate anyone that doesn't look/talk/pray like them, they won't ever think about who their *real* adversaries are in this life. Oldest trick in the book.

In any case ... the Republicans need to do some triage on their branding, and fast. They sounded a lot smarter when W. was doing the talking for them.

I read this yesterday and had to add this to the pile: the phrase "comfort with ignorance" to describe Palin (and some other Republicans) has really stuck with me.


Hot Air's Allahpundit:

Jim Geraghty why it is that the left despises so. He’s certainly got part of the answer — happy, successful pro-life conservative women are a grievous offense to leftist feminism — but I think he misses the element of sheer contempt they have for her intellect.

To the left, I think, she embodies a sort of comfort with ignorance that they think characterizes most/all conservatives. Why they’ve come to see her that way is complicated (part of it’s probably educational pedigree, part of it’s her affinity for rural pastimes like hunting, part of it’s the Katie Couric interview and the canned answers she gave at the debate with Biden), but I think it’s a mistake to assume that their antipathy is rooted in nothing but fear and defensiveness. That’s not true of the right vis-a-vis The One, after all. Is it?

Emphasis mine. And I 100 percent agree with the bolded statement. It's much simpler than other versions of this theory, relying less on creepy psychosexual dynamics, and ultimately I think more prescient. And the nice thing about it is that it sort of cuts both ways. If liberals are right that Palin really is ignorant, and moreover, completely comfortable with that ignorance, and moreover still, thought she ought to be Vice President of the United States, they have perhaps ample reason to dislike her. On the other hand, if they dismiss Palin because she looks pretty or talks funny or doesn't read the same newspapers they do, that goes to their being snobs.