This is exactly why the GOP is fast becoming irrelevant and marginalized against .. what's the word? Oh yeah, reality. Conservative writer David Brooks from National Review says in a Huffington post article that Sarah Palin "represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party" . Hold that metaphor!

 Quote:
[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.


I couldn't agree more. I actually credit John McCain for admitting that global warming is real. We spent nearly a decade trying to suppress and debunk any science that said otherwise on ideological grounds, not on any intellectual merit. Any science, for whatever subject, that didn't gel with Bush policy or Republican ideology was buried, suppressed, badmouthed and ridiculed. This is not a party of ideas. this is a party that fears any ideas not in line with their biases. I'm so glad the smart Republicans are starting to come around to this sad fact.

You even see this anti-intellectualism demonstrated in G-Man's idiotic thread where he pins the economic crisis on Fannie Mae and minority lending. Why let complicated facts interfere with simplistic scapegoating of people that bigots really don't like much.

Let's not forget "reality based community" as well.. Wikipedia.

 Quote:
Reality-based community is a popular term among liberal political commentators in the United States. In the fall of 2004, the phrase "proud member of the reality-based community," was first used to suggest the commentator's opinions are based more on observation than faith, assumption, or ideology. The term has been defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from [their] judicious study of discernible reality." Some commentators have gone as far as to suggest that there is an overarching conflict in society between the reality-based community and the "faith-based community" as a whole. It can be seen as an example of political framing.

The source of the term is a quotation in an October 17, 2004, New York Times Magazine article by writer Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush:

 Quote:
[b] The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."


the problem with creating your own reality or your own "truth" is that the real world and facts usually gets in the way...