Party of Idiots

Yesterday I was talking to a co-worker about health care reform. It can be hard to be a liberal, or even a centrist, and work in an industry that will be affected by any change to the current system, for better or worse. But she was talking about two friends of hers, one of whom is married to a doctor, and the other of whom runs a small business. These are people who heard about the "Ask Grandma How She Wants to Die" meme coming from the right wing about coverage for end-of-life planning, and for whatever reason, instead of thinking, "That doesn't sound right...let me find out more", they decided to buy the whole load o'horsepuckey with no further thought or brain-filter.

I'm begining to think that Republicans may very well just be wired differently than we are. Perhaps it's that authoritarian thing, where anyone who has a loud voice and a media mouthpiece is by definition an authoritative source, except that these very same people rail against the nonexistent "liberal media." But a poll conducted for the Great Orange Satan by Research 2000 shows the Republican Party to have become a party of the stupid, the ignorant, the gullible, the ill-informed, and the too fucking lazy to think for themselves:

	YES	NO	NOT SURE
ALL	77	11	12
MEN	75	12	13
WOMEN	79	10	11
DEM	93	4	3
REP	42	28	30
IND	83	8	9
OTH/REF	80	9	11
NON VOTERS	84	7	9
WHITE	71	14	15
BLACK	97	1	2
LATINO	87	6	7
OTHER/REF	88	6	6
18-29	88	4	8
30-44	72	14	14
45-59	82	8	10
60+	69	17	14
NORTHEAST	93	4	3
SOUTH	47	23	30
MIDWEST	90	6	4
WEST	87	7	6

Almost three-quarters of Republicans either disbelieve that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. or suspect that he wasn't. There are similar numbers for the southern region of the country, where Republicans largely hold sway. So why are Republicans, particularly southern Republicans, so disproportionately ill-informed? Is it too much Jesus and not enough thought? Is it a simple matter of trying to find a way to say that the black guy in the White House with the funny name doesn't belong there? Do they not know that Hawaii is a state?

No matter what the reason, it's clear that the Republican Party has become a regional party of almost unfathomably stupid people.

Richard Wolffe discussed the poll with the GOS himself on Countdown last night, including the question of whether, as I've written, the whole "birther" controversy is really a way to avoid talking about how they don't think a black man belongs in the White House:

I always enjoy when the GOS appears on television. I love the idea that this dweeby little guy is the one that the right wing thinks is the greatest threat to America not named "Barack Obama."

If, as Digby says, the media have already turned and are ready to cross out the name "Clinton" and scrawl the name "Obama" in crayon on the Destroy the Democratic Presidency bus and ride it across the country as some kind of bizarre, self-styled Beltway Merry pranksters, they might wish to consider the depths to which party they seem already willing to embrace again has sunk, and whether they really want to go across the country with mouth-frothing idiots.