Republicans: Why so dumb?

[Clears throat, taps microphone] My homage to Charlotte Allen:

Remember G. Gordon Liddy back in May, 2003: "That flight suit makes the best of his manly characteristic." Or Chris Matthews on "Hardball" in May, 2005: “We’re proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who’s physical.” And Matthews again, interviewing John McCain on January 29, 2008: "There he is! Senator McCain! You know you’re in my heart."

You’re in my heart? Manly characteristics? Swaggering? What is this, the monthly editorial meeting for the Harlequin Romance Book Club?

I am certainly not the only Republican flummoxed by this openly homoerotic hero worship by my fellow Republicans. An acquaintance plans to write a screenplay called "The Golf Course," in which four Republican men drive around in an electric cart and salaciously fondle their five irons while discussing how to most effectively screw minorities out of their right to vote.

What is it about us Republicans? Why do we always fall for the hyperbole, the ill-conceived ideas, the bulging flightsuit crotches? Just look at what’s #1 on the hardcover nonfiction best seller list of the New York Times: "Liberal Fascism," by Jonah Goldberg, a paean to half-cocked research, terrible sentence structure, and a shocking paucity of logic! Why must Goldberg perpetuate the stereotype that Republicans are incapable of producing the facts to support our arguments? There’s also Glenn Beck, at #7, reinforcing the notion that Republicans are too dumb to understand evolutionary theory, and Newt Gingrich, weighing in at #8, reminding us that he is the human canker sore on the upper lip of Republican family values.

Television serves us no better. The Sunday morning news programs give Republicans plenty of air time to put our stupidity on display. We can publicly humiliate ourselves by salivating over John McCain with George Stephanopoulos. Tim Russert’s our go-to man when we want to shred a certain female Democratic presidential candidate. Create an echo chamber from the latest White House blast fax? Give Cokie Roberts a call; she’s quite the gifted parrot.

As sad as it may be, several of the alleged myths about 21st-century Republicanism have been proven true. We really do fetishize war and want to drown Medicare and Social Security in a bathtub. The size of our automobiles is inversely proportionate to our "manly characteristic." Moreover, a study published by Regent University revealed that Republican men are statistically more prone to closeted gay sex than Democratic men. (The only good news was that closeted Republican men tended to be single, so the revelations of their sex lives didn’t destroy entire families with twelve or more children.) And then there was that study that showed that liberals are more adaptable than conservatives. Surely, the theory that Republicans are the dumber party is amply supported by the candidates they put forward for President.

I am perfectly willing to admit that I myself am a classic case of Republican stupidity. I consistently vote against my own interests. I support permanent tax cuts even though I will never personally benefit from them. I have no idea how people can live without a vacation home in Aspen. I don’t even know how many dressage ponies I own. I made it through college and got a job on the basis of nepotism and family wealth, two areas where, researchers agree, Republicans consistently outperform Democrats. Yes, my heroes Teddy Roosevelt and Barry Goldwater were dyed-in-the-wool Republicans, but they were just outliers.

So this is my message to Republicans: embrace your stupidity! Revel in the things that differentiate us from bleeding heart, tax-and-spend liberals: making boatloads of money off the backs of the working poor, imposing our twisted and hypocritical morality on others, and bullying sovereign nations into accepting corporatocracy through military force. Accept it willingly, so we can giggle and moon and sigh at the latest manly declarations by John "Straight Talk" McCain and deny the fact that deep down inside, we are utterly soulless idiots.

[Editor's note: the author is not, nor has ever considered even for a nanosecond being, a Republican in real life.]

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