The GOP's 'Stupid' Problem
Last week “Morning Joe” Scarborough, in response to Rep.
Todd Akin’s now infamously crazy statements reiterated the frustrations of
republican consultant Nicole Wallace, saying he was tired of the Republican
party being “the stupid party.” Well Joe, as the saying goes, “you reap what
you sow.” And for decades now the GOP have been sowing “stupid seeds,” which
are now coming to harvest.
Republicans will argue that they have stood firm against
Akin and are being judged unfairly due to just one man’s lack of judgment. But
they are wrong, the Republican party doesn’t have a Todd Akin problem, they
have a ‘stupid’ problem. For decades the ‘Grand Old Party’ has not only
tolerated sheer stupidity within their ranks, they have embraced it.
Let me take a step back and explain what I mean by “stupid.”
Stupid is not a slip of the tongue, or mangling the old proverb about “fool me
once, shame on you…” as GW Bush did, that did not make him stupid. Nor is a
person stupid for advocating ideas that I stand diametrically opposed to. I
doubt that I could possibly disagree with anyone more than I do with Karl Rove,
however Rove is not a stupid man. Stupid has to be something a person truly
believes and says with conviction, yet makes no sense to any thinking person.
At 46 year of age, it’s easy for me to trace back where the
main “seeds of stupidity,” were first sown in the modern GOP. When President
Ronald Reagan proclaimed that evolution was, after all, “just a theory,”
as if it were just a hunch, or a guess, it ushered in a conservative era of
anti-science, anti-intellectualism and junk science, culminating in a movement
of thoughtless, nincompoops known as the Tea Party.
My current poster-child for stupid conservatives is MSNBC’s
S.E. Cupp, whom I remain convinced was only hired by the liberal network to
make conservatives look bad. In her faux outrage over Akin’s remark’s, she was
appalled at his use of “junk science” to justify his position. This is the same
S.E. Cupp that weeks earlier commented that “intelligent design” could be a
link between evolution and religion. It’s just plain stupid to advocate one
junk science, “intelligent design,” while criticizing another. All junk science
is the result of stupid seeds being sown somewhere.
I like to make the comparison to conservative males who so
vigorously protest the practice of giving six and seven year olds awards just
for trying. In reality, children are weaned off the “you’re a winner for just
showing up” by middle school when smart kids make the honor roll, and kids do
get cut from the basketball team. However, in the Tea Party, adults still cling
to the “any idea is worthy of respect,” regardless of how stupid and
far-fetched.
Therefore, Tea Party congressmen, and people such as Rush
Limbaugh, with no formal scientific training, are just as qualified to comment
on climate change as say, a climate scientist with a PhD who works at NASA.
After all, science is only made up of theories, such as climate change,
evolution, germs and gravity, all theories. So why is your theory any
better than mine?
This anti-science, and anti-intellectual fervor of the far
right not only tolerates, but actually celebrates stupid, placing it on a
pedestal. When then-Alaska Governor and Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin
answered a question about foreign policy experience by stating that she could
see Russia from parts of her state, the far right rallied to her cause,
celebrating her sheer stupidity. Not long after, she stood defending her belief
that “abstinence-only” was the most effective sex education, while standing
next to her unwed pregnant teenage daughter. She could have been wearing a
t-shirt saying “Got Stupid?” She remains a respected figure in Tea party
circles.
In setting the “gold-standard” for stupidity last week, Todd
Akin actually was telling the truth. Remember, he prefaced his comment with,
“From what I understand from doctors.” So Akin was merely reaping the harvest
that had been sown from the seeds of stupidity planted by Dr, John Willke, who
in 1999 first wrote of natural female defenses against pregnancy in cases of
rape. Dr. Wllke served as a surrogate in the 2008 Romney campaign, and has met
with the GOP Presidental nominee recently. The same argument was made back in
1980 by right-to-lifer Leon Harris of Arkansas when he wrote “Concern for rape
victims is a red herring because conceptions from rape occur with approximately
the same frequency as snowfall in Miami," What happened to Holmes? He was
appointed a Federal judge by George W. Bush, and confirmed in the US Senate
with the support of Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn, both now leading the
charge against Todd Akin.
Now it will be argued that we liberals have our own crazies
and stupid people, but ours are basically living in tent cities, “occupying” a
public park, or on the “View” on daytime TV. We’re not electing them to
Congress and appointing them judges. When Van Jones dabbled in the idea of the
9/11 “truther” movement, he was quickly ushered out of the Obama
administration, not put on a pedestal. Yet the Republican convention will
feature seven “birthers” in speaking roles, more sowing of stupid.
Yet the right and the Tea Party continue to rally around
stupidity and embrace it. Here are some of their recent gems:
-
Congressman Allen West proclaimed “there's about 78 to 81
members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party”
-
Congressman Louie Gohmert blamed the Aurora, Colorado mass
murder on, “ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs.”
-
Congressman Mike Kelly compared access to birth control to the
9/11 and Pearl harbor attacks on America.
-
Lubbock (Texas) judge Tom Head said of Obama:“ he’s going to
try to give the sovereignty of the United States away to the United Nations.
What do you think the public is going to do when that happens? We are talking
civil unrest, civil disobedience, possibly, possibly civil war.”
Todd Akin is merely a symptom of a much larger problem the
GOP faces, and that is a ‘stupid’ problem. To illustrate just far a Republican
candidate will go to appeal to the anti-intellectual, anti-learning right wing
Tea Party base of the republican party, Mitt Romney, after receiving two
degrees from Harvard, and sending three children to Harvard, criticized
President Obama for “spending too much time at Harvard.”
Now that’s just plain stupid.
