Here’s the way it shakes out. Paraphrasing Slavoj Žižek, Slovene philosopher and cultural critic:
Of these three features:
personal honesty,
intelligence,
and sincere support of Republican policies,
it is only possible to combine two, never all three of these attributes.
If one is honest and supportive … one is not very bright.
If one is bright and supportive … one is not honest.
And if one is honest and bright … one can not be supportive.
There’s no such thing as a smart, honest, Republican. I challenge anyone to find this elusive creature. The odds are you’ll stumble across the Loch Ness Monster and the Abominable Snowman playing cribbage in The Vatican before you’ll be able to snap a couple shots of a smart, honest, Republican.
The fact of the matter is smart, honest people recoil when they come face to face with Republican ideas. Smart, honest people are aghast at the concept of cutting food stamps for hungry people, denying health care for the sick, and taxing the poor and middle-class while giving a free ride to the richest people in the country. But the problem is smart, honest people have ceded too much ground to the dumbasses and their venal overlords. The proof is in the polls, ladies and gents.
In 2003 nearly seven in ten Americans believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.
In 2006, 85% of U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq thought they were sent to war “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the Sept. 11 attacks.”
In 2011, 38% of Americans believed that the US found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda, 26% believed that Iraq had WMDs just before the Iraq War, and 16% believed that WMDs were found in Iraq.