Parker: For the anti-elite GOP base, ignorance is bliss
By KATHLEEN PARKER
Published 09:05 p.m., Friday, November 18, 2011
The headline on Democratic strategist Paul Begala‘s recent Newsweek essay dodged subtlety: "The Stupid Party."
"Republicans used to admire intelligence. But now they’re dumbing themselves down," was the subhead.
Democrats couldn’t agree more. And quietly, many Republicans share the sentiment. They just can’t seem to stop themselves.
Republicans aren’t really stupid, of course, and Begala acknowledges this. But, as he also pointed out, the conservative brain trust once led by William F. Buckley has been supplanted by talk radio hosts who love to quote Buckley (and boast of his friendship), but who do not share the man’s pedigree or his nimble mind. Moreover, where Buckley tried to rid the GOP of fringe elements, notably the John Birch Society, today’s conservatives have let them back in. The 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference was co-sponsored by the Birchers.
Meanwhile, the big tent fashioned by Ronald Reagan has become bilious with the hot air of religious fervor.
No one was more devout than the very-Catholic Buckley, but you didn’t see him convening revivals in the public square. Nor is it likely he would he have embraced fundamentalist views that increasingly have forced the party into a corner where science and religion can’t coexist.
Scientific skepticism, the engine that propels intellectual inquiry, has morphed into skepticism of science fueled by religious certitude. In this strange world, it is heresy to express concern about, for example, climate change – or even to suggest that human behavior may be a contributing factor. Jon Huntsman committed blasphemy when he told ABC’s Jake Tapper that he trusts scientists on global warming.
What Huntsman next said, though refreshing and true, ensured that his poll numbers would remain in the basement: "When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Sciences has said about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science and, therefore, in a losing position."
Of course, plenty of Republicans agree with this appraisal, including other presidential candidates.
Nevertheless, the Republican base requires that candidates tack away from science toward the theistic position – only God controls climate. More to the point, Rush Limbaugh says that climate change is a hoax and so it must be. Huntsman may as well be a Democrat.
It takes courage to swim against the tide of know-nothingness that has become de rigueur among the anti-elite, anti-intellectual Republican base. Call it the Palinization of the GOP in which the least informed earns the loudest applause.
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Parker: For the anti-elite GOP base, ignorance is bliss – Houston Chronicle
