Oct 13 2008

Newest Nobel Prize Winner: “Republicans … Party of Stupid”

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Paul Krugman, the winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics, penned an article a few months ago: “Know-Nothing Politics“.  

the debate on energy policy has helped me find the words for something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid.

For Krugman, the Republican embrace and promotion of Drillusion exemplified how “know-nothingism” had become revered within the Republican Party.  “The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”” ANd, “In the case of oil, this takes the form of pretending that more drilling would produce fast relief at the gas pump.”  

Krugman called the Republican leadership to task for promoting a policy that flew in the face of facts and expert knowledge.  His real fear was the power of this “dumb” approach to energy when it came to potentially swaying votes. Looking at this debate and the difference between lying and confusion, Krugman came to this generalized conclusion:

In any case, remember this the next time someone calls for an end to partisanship, for working together to solve the country’s problems. It’s not going to happen – not as long as one of America’s two great parties believes that when it comes to politics, stupidity is the best policy.

13 comments

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    • TomP on October 13, 2008 at 23:01
    • #

    From his book:

    “My generation grew up in a nation of strong democratic values and broadly shared prosperity. But both those values and that shared prosperity have been slipping away.

    “We can reverse that trend. Political and economic reform turned the oligarchic America of the Gilded Age, a place of vast inequality, bigotry, and corruption, into the imperfect but far better society of the postwar era. The challenge now is to do again what the New Deal did: to create institutions that will support and sustain a decent society.”

  2. they think they’re smart.  They think they have the marketing and management skills to sell their line of Bull Moose shit to the public.  And the public is being prepared to be that stupid because why else would the education system in this country be starved the way it is?  

    • RUKind on October 14, 2008 at 06:00
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    How perfectly put. And Fox News is the network of stupid.

    Krugman nailed down what I’ve been thinking lately. This election isn’t aboit Dem/Repug, red/blue, liberal/conservative. This election is about the curious vs the uncurious, the intelligent vs the mediocre, the seekers vs the true believers.

    Liberal elite or just plain elite has an underlying theme of the intellectuals -the pointy headed liberals, the ivory tower types of the 60s and 70s. The great mediocracy and idiocracy has had its chance and they totally blew it. It’s time for people with above average IQs to clean up the mess.

    A really great start would be abolishing NCLB. It establishes mediocracy as the national standard. Which all brings to mind an apocryphal tale:

    [Roman] Hruska is best remembered in American political history for a 1970 speech he made to the Senate urging them to confirm the nomination [by Richard Milhouse Nixon] of G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court. Responding to criticism that Carswell had been a mediocre judge, Hruska claimed that:

       “Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.”[1]

    This speech was criticized by many, and Carswell was eventually defeated.

    []s are mine.

    The race to the lowest common denominator got us here. It’s time to assert some intelligence.

    Satya.

  4. not a party, so getting people thinking is really not in any of their interests.

    We should never confuse what they say with what they know. They speak only to herd voters. We should think about what they say not in terms of some imaginary internal logic but in terms of its tactical and strategic purpose.

  5. This award was perfect!

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