One thing that strikes me about the current crop of GOP bad men is that they sure are an unlikely group of tough guys. Ted Cruz, a former law student so effete he wouldn’t deign to study with graduates of the “minor ivies”, and Rand Paul, a mild-mannered Duke-educated ophthalmologist, aren’t likely to spill the blood of any tyrants outside of role-playing games.
They aren’t plain-spoken heartland alternatives to elite librul east coasters, they’re just the even douchier former classmates of elite librul east coasters.
It goes to show that all the love for Joe the Plumber was a sham. Teahadists may decry book-learnin’ but in the end they revere it. They’ll support Ted Cruz’s shenanigans but they wouldn’t support the same from Jim Inhofe or Sarah Palin, at least not as much, because they think Cruz is smart. He doesn’t call the VP “O’Biden” and he did well in school. That has more cachet with teahadists than they’re willing to admit.
schrodinger's cat
Does David Brooks like Cruz?
raven
You should see the local yokels jump up and down about DOCTOR Paul Broun and how fucking smart he is!
Alexandra
I have many leatherbound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.
Elizabelle
I would guess that Ted Cruz has a high IQ, and a low EQ.
That’s probably true of several libertarians too.
Mostly, it’s interesting someone can be smart enough to graduate from Harvard Law, but not smart enough to understand the point of Green Eggs and Ham.
Teatards: there’s your man.
TG Chicago
What’s your evidence for this? I think their affinity to Cruz and Paul comes in spite of their degrees. They just like anybody who gets on the teevee and talks mean about Obama.
ETA: I mean, George Bush went to Yale. But I don’t think that’s why the 27%er wingnuts loved him.
Mark S.
Doug, your last ten posts have been about Ted Cruz. I think you have a man crush.
celticdragonchick
Only when the educated person in question makes them feel good about their ignorance by using descriptors like “common sense”, “heartland”, and, natch, “real Americans” when talking about them.
Tom Levenson
From DougJ @ top:
Seems an assumption (or two) not in evidence. (A) not all Ivy/peer institution folks are as bright as they might like to think and (B) I don’t think that Cruz or Paul are loved for their intelligence, perceived or real. They’re loved because they can perform a function effectively, or at least more so than previous contenders for the role. (Looking at you, Rubio, no one’s idea of a smart guy, and at you, Bobbie J, generally acknowledged to be at least reasonably smart, but utterly ineffective in the anti-reality Kabuki theater that is modern conservative politics.)
I think this is less a mark of TeaHadi secret longings for smarts, or even low cunning, and more that of gas(bags) filling available volume.
Patrick
That has definitely not been my experience with them. Heck, if it was true then they wouldn’t be as opposed to doing something about climate change as they currently are. Or gun control. Heck, they don’t mind the debt ceiling fight since they have no clue what the consequences even are.
Zifnab
I don’t know about that. There’s a reverence for “prestige” that comes with Ivy League, speaking to wealth and power and success on a more generic level. And there’s an air of “Even the New Republic Says…” when you can have a guy come out of a liberal bastion like Harvard or Yale while decrying the liberalness of those institutions. You get an implied claim, of sorts. “They disagreed with me, but they were still forced to give me a degree because deep down they knew I was right.”
Beyond that, I think Teahadists would be more than happy to follow behind Inhofe or Palin if either of those two knew how to organize and lead a proper movement. The difference between Inhofe/Palin and someone like a Koch brother or Phyllis Schadfly is that the latter *actually know how to manage an enterprise*, where as the former just know how to grift a crowd after they’ve stumbled onto the stage.
Whether Cruz is a true leader or just someone that knows when to put his hand out at the opportune moment remains to be seen. Given the way he’s handled his compatriots in the House and Senate, I’m suspecting its the latter. Cruz doesn’t appear very good at building a coalition of the willing, or he wouldn’t have the WSJ nipping at his heels.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I tend to agree. I think if Palin weren’t so lazy and found herself a Rove, she could be doing this as Senator from Alaska right now, and it would have the added bonus of starbursts for Rich Lowry, Bill Kristol and your Uncle Earl. Of course the video of Palin talking for more than half an hour might be so bad it would be the end of all this, so who knows?
Sloegin
If it’s their moran vs. your smart guy, they’ll claim edumacation don’t matter. If they have a smart guy, they’ll claim their point wins because they know the other side cares about schoolin and learnin.
An argument point, nothing more.
Also too, if their guy is good say, in law, then their guy by extension is also an expert in economics, climate science, sociology, diplomacy, etc.
cokane
Nas ain’t all that
ruemara
You’re so wrong. Teahadist deride booklearnin’. They hate the idea that someone is smarter than them. they love idiots with degrees that confirm what they believe. Hell that happens on our side too. But that’s the thing. Smart is horrible, unless they believe the same dumbass shit you do.
fuckwit
@TG Chicago: DING DING DING. The first east-coast Ivy League blue-blood that I can remember the know-nothings falling deeply in love with was W.
I always marveled at how he got away with pretending to be a redneck. He was the son of a president, for fuck’s sake, grandson of a senator, born in Connecticut, went to Andover and Yale, summered in Maine.
So I guess Cruz and Aqua Buddha are just more of the same.
srv
The teaparty respects a man who can filibuster without a teleprompter.
It’s the Canadian part that is the problem.
celticdragonchick
Damn, this is messed up. One of the occasions when a libertarian institute is actually worthwhile…
http://www.ij.org/freedomflix/category/88/177
A family owned grocery store in Michigan had their entire bank account emptied out by the feds in a civil forfeiture action.
The accusation? That the business had a habit of making deposits less than 10,000 dollars, and $10,000 is the point where deposits must be disclosed under banking laws. Ergo, the feds accused the store of being a money laundering front, even though no actual investigation has been done and no charges were ever filed. The money was just taken. Of course, the feds never asked why the deposits were under 10,000 dollars…
The insurance for the store only covers cash losses up to 10,000, so the store deposits the cash before it goes over that amount.
The family is suing to get their money back with assistance form the Institute For Justice.
Mike in NC
@Tom Levenson: Perfesser Newt Gingrich – now there is a gasbag!
TXG1112
Doug, you’re over-thinking this. There is no internal consistency to the GOP and it’s positions except hating on liberals and poor people. Everything else is window dressing or disingenuous justifications for lowering taxes.
Turgidson
@fuckwit:
Yep. They teatards and knuckledraggers are able to fall in love with entitled, educated bluebloods as long as they renounce all that fancy book-learning by word or deed and act like a tough guy cowboy type. But they don’t actually admire the fancy booklearnin’ – I almost think they view that kind of thing like people view alcoholism – those who get caught in its clutches, but come out the other side are admired and praised. That’s how the GOP base views librul edukayshun. The fact that Cruz and Aqua Buddha and Dubs went to those institutions but survived to become rightwing nutjobs is what’s endearing. Not that they went in the first place.
And as we saw with Palin, education certainly isn’t a prerequisite or necessary attribute to gain their fierce admiration.
Slats Grobnik
The teabaggers love authority, and the act of submitting to it. “Book learning” makes one an authority. Democrats/Liberals/Other are however – as always – exempt from this rule. That Paul and Cruz et al have advanced degrees from elite institutions just shows how hard they have worked and how deserving they are of deference. A Democrat/Liberal/Other, OTOH, is just an effete elite smarmy ivory-towered knowitall.
cckids
@Elizabelle:
This x 1000.
There is intelligent, and then there is smart. The first is all about test scores, IQ, etc. The second is application of those brains & knowledge to the real world. Ted Cruz has intelligence (according to those who know him, FSM knows it is not on display). People like President Obama or Senator Warren have both.
fuckwit
@Turgidson: Ooh that’s good. I think this may be a Fundamentalist-derived thing: they “found jesus” (he’d been underneath the couch cushions the whole time!) and are forgiven. Just like Palin’s out-of-wedlock grandkids or W’s drinking and coke use, or Jimmy Swaggert’s whoring or whatever, it seems a fundamentalist tenet that you can sin all you like and fuck up all you like, and you have a get-out-of-hell-free card by just accepting jesus as your personal savior and testifying loudly and publicly about that, to stay a part of the tribe. So maybe you can go to Harvard and Yale and be born with a silver spoon up your nose, but as long as you tearfully renounce your rich kid sins (but not give up any of its benefits or privileges, of course) you’re part of the redneck in-crowd.
fuckwit
@celticdragonchick: That law was recently passed, IIRC, and it’s Kafka Supreme. It makes it illegal to make deposits just less than the minimum deposit for reporting to the FBI. I think it’s called “structuring transactions”. Defiinitely surreal, but I also seem to remember it being what eventually nailed Tom Delay, but I might be fuzzy on that. Still, I find it odd that they’d just take the money and not press any charges, but maybe that’s what that fucked up law says they can do. If so, guess what? The answer is to elect a Congress that isn’t batshit insane, and repeal or modify that fucking law.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Meh, the rubes don’t care about their politician’s credentials are as long as they’re saying what the rubes want to hear and being major assholes to the enemies of the rubes.
It isn’t any more complicated than that.
The Moar You Know
@ruemara: This, pretty much. I knew which kids in my high school would be conservatives just by listing the ones who made fun of my brother and I for deciding to go to college.
That list was 100% right.
Chris
They decry our book-learnin’ and revere theirs. They hate book-learnin’ on general principle because it tends to undermine their beliefs (which is what happens when you believe a bunch of bullshit). But put a trained parrot in a suit, give him a Yale degree and teach him to say “Liberal academia is biased and wrong! Awk!” and they’ll fall all over themselves revering him. Because he’s saying what they want to hear, but he’s saying it with authority. Or so they think.
It’s the same relationship they have with media. In general, the media sucks (because in general, any honest investigative reporting is going to play havoc with their bullshit). But Fox News, the Moonie Times, the Wall Street Journal, the National Review, those are all good. More than good, channels to the Truth that the silly liberal zombies deny. So they’re okay.
It’s the same relationship they have with pop culture. In general, it’s crude, vulgar, scandalous, unpatriotic and undermines our traditional values. Until South Park comes out, which does all of these things but is produced by people who say “I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals.” And all of a sudden, it’s okay.
Heck, it’s the same relationship they have with minorities, poor people, women, etc… In general, they hate them because they’re leeches on society who don’t know their place. But get someone like Herman Cain to go on stage and say “Hey! You’re all leeches on society! And you don’t know your place!” and he’s all good.
What they want above all else is to be told what they want to hear. Doesn’t matter by whom.
(Oh, and there’s the added bonus that you get to say “Ah HA! Hypocritical liberals! You don’t really revere academic knowledge, you don’t really respect the freedom of the press, you don’t really want to protect artists, you don’t really love the disenfranchised! If you did, all you’d have to do is listen to ours, and you’d be convinced! FRAUDS!”)
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
@Elizabelle:
I do not like him,
Ted-I-am.
I do not like
Ted Cruz, the man
Would you vote for him
in a few years?
Would you vote for him
after a few beers?
Not in a few years.
Not after a few beers.
Not for the White House.
Not even for the White House mouse.
I would not vote for him here or there.
I would not vote for him anywhere.
I would not vote for Ted Cruz, the man
I do not like him, Ted-I-am.
I could not, would not vote
For this man
Not on a boat, not wearing a coat
Not even with conservative hands on my throat
Hehe (cross posted on my blog)
clone12
Show me a doctrinaire libertarian and I’ll show you a high-function asperger
reflectionephemeral
@TG Chicago:
Yeah, that seems to be an important point here, it’s not that “Teahadists revere book learnin”, it’s that the people the GOP establishment puts up for the Teahadists to revere tend to be pretty polished and well-connected.
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
@celticdragonchick: I believe that they can confiscate money before filing charges BUT I thought they had to show some level of proof that it was the result of ill gotten gains (probable cause for investigation, usually proof is in the search warrant, which they should have used to review their bank records…)
If they truly had no investigation/no probable cause, the family should get their money back and someone should get canned. And yes, this law is frequently used to harass people, but LEO’s usually reserve it for people they have had on their radar for illegal behavior (drug dealing, illegal gambling, etc) for a while. I strongly support putting more limitations on their ability confiscate but I wouldn’t take this tool away from LEO’s entirely. It’s a fine balance and unfortunately there is always room for abuse.
Someone correct me if I am wrong here…..
Chris
@clone12:
IMHO :D
Chris
@reflectionephemeral:
Also, Yale and Hahhvahd might be names to sneer at if you’re a teahadist, but that’s not the fraternity Republican politicians are trying to enter. For the Very Serious People at the centers of power on the East Coast, Ivy League name recognition and the networks you form at those schools are everything.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven: My great-granddaddy’s term for people like Broun or Cruz was “educated ignoramus.”
Redleg
Ted Cruz may be “smart” about some law stuff but he doesn’t seem to know jack shit about economics.
Tractarian
@TG Chicago:
Gonna have to agree with this. Doug, your thesis appears to have been fabricated out of thin air. I don’t see any evidence that an Inhofe behaving like Cruz wouldn’t be just as popular with the Teabaggers.
Still, I enjoyed reading this unequivocally-true statement:
Waldo
@TG Chicago: Exactly. Cruz may be an effete East Coast Ivy Leaguer, but he’s their effete East Coast Ivy Leaguer.
reflectionephemeral
@Chris: Agreed. GOP senators play to those sentiments to get votes in the primary, but they’re not about to actually send their own kids to schools with the Tea Partiers’ kids.
Also, agreed with TD Chicago’s point: there’s no evidence to support the argument that the substance of a charge leveled against the president is designed to hold any meaning, beyond than the expression of dislike.
I mean, Obama is an appeaser who runs roughshod over the Constitution to threaten Syria; a Chicago-style machine thug who didn’t even have the guts to push single-payer through Congress, etc. He’s a “floundering naif” who’s a “real radical” (two separate George Will columns).
The meaning of the “Obama’s an elitist” charge is just, “me no likey Obama”. No one expects it to be a principle they’d actually stick to ten seconds later, if some Harvard-educated guy passes by and says he hates ObamaCare.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Zifnab:
This, there were plenty of ways for Cruz could have played this without pissing off almost every Republican in the House and Senate. Grandstanding for the Base is part of GoP game but it’s clear Cruz went out of bonds. All this shows his is 2016 ambitions is to be the next Ron Paul.
As for why the Base loves Cruz (at the moment); he’s being the asshole they wish they could be in public.
Trollhattan
@Alexandra:
I can’t decide, would “Rich Mahogany” be a better cologne name (Axe for grownups) or pr0n name (“The Full-Service Butler” starring Rich Mahogany and Kandee Splaytoes)?
lol
@celticdragonchick:
Sounds like they were just trying to defraud their insurance company instead?
Chris
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I wonder if that fail-parade of Front Runner Of The Month they had in the 2012 primaries is supposed to be a permanent feature of the GOP now. Rand Paul had his moment in the sun with that drone-filibuster last spring. Now he’s a pessimist and an appeaser, and it’s Cruz’s turn.
NickM
I had been afraid of Cruz as an up-and-coming Tea Party president until I heard his voice on the radio this morning. He’s high-pitched, pinched-sounding, almost no Texas accent. He sounds like an annoying little man: a Poindexter, a Milquetoast. I couldn’t stand to listen to 5 seconds of his nasal hectoring. I can’t imagine Americans are going to sign up to listen to that voice every night on the radio or news for four years.
Thank god.
NickM
I had been afraid of Cruz as an up-and-coming Tea Party president until I heard his voice on the radio this morning. His voice is not the kind of basso profundo they like from their strong men. It’s high-pitched, pinched-sounding, almost no Texas accent. He sounds like an annoying little man: a Poindexter, a Milquetoast. I couldn’t stand to listen to 5 seconds of his nasal hectoring. I can’t imagine Americans are going to sign up to listen to that voice every night on the radio or news for four years.
Thank god.
Jebediah
@Trollhattan:
Why can’t it be both?
Mr. Longform
@NickM: Couldn’t agree more in theory, but I thought the same thing after I heard George W. Bush the first time, and lo an behold …. The 27% don’t seem to mind that kind of thing so much.
Elizabelle
@Ms. D. Ranged in AZ:
That’s marvelous.
PS: I like your blog.
Mnemosyne
@Mr. Longform:
To be fair, W actually lost the election in 2000 by 500K votes. It was the Supreme Court that installed him, not voters.
2004 is a different matter.
Jebediah
@Mnemosyne:
That one they stole fair and square.
Lurking Canadian
@Mnemosyne: Wait, what? 500K? I have seen claims that Florida actually voted Gore, after you counted and recounted, but the margin couldn’t have been more than a few hundred.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Lurking Canadian: national popular vote
Mnemosyne
@Lurking Canadian:
It’s our wacky dual system of voting for presidents — technically, we don’t vote directly for president. We vote for Electors from each state to go to the Electoral College and cast their votes on our behalf. So George W. Bush got 500,000 fewer votes overall for president than Al Gore did, but he won the election because Florida has a lot of electoral votes, and the electoral votes trump the popular vote.
This is something that had not happened since 1888, so that’s why there was such a ginormous freakout over it. And, of course, we get into the question of whether Bush actually won Florida at all, because shenanigans, but the Supreme Court decided that the counting should be stopped so they could declare Bush the winner.
Lurking Canadian
@Mnemosyne: Well, that’s what had me confused. I certainly understand frustration with the electoral college, but it’s not like it’s cheating to win the EC but lose the popular vote. Nobody would say that the Supreme Court had installed Bush over the will of the people if Bush had won Florida by, say, 100,000 votes. The Supremes would not then have been involved at all, right? Gore would still have 400,000 more votes overall than Bush but nobody would then be claiming that Bush actually lost the election.
Just last year, Democrats got more votes than Republicans for the House, but because of shameless gerrymandering, the Rs wound up with more seats. Many people are unhappy about that outcome, but I’ve never seen anybody suggest that it’s illegitimate.
Mnemosyne
@Lurking Canadian:
A LOT of Americans would still say the election had been stolen if that had been the case. There’s a debate over the Electoral College every single election and people are always unhappy about it, but there’s not enough momentum to change it since that would require a 2/3rds vote in Congress PLUS a vote by 2/3rds of the states to change it.
I’ve seen many people suggest it’s illegitimate, including the people who successfully sued over that gerrymandering in Texas. It was found to be illegal but — important point — it did not invalidate the elections that had already been held.
You can say that George W. Bush got the majority of the votes in the Electoral College, but you cannot say he got the majority of the vote, because it is absolutely not true. That’s my point. He “won” on a legal technicality thanks to bald-faced cheating on the part of the Supreme Court, but he did not win a majority of the vote.
ETA: Basically, I’m arguing against the premise of OMG Americans are so stupid they voted for Bush in 2000 so therefore they’ll totally vote for Cruz! You can complain that Floridians were stupid enough to vote for Bush in 2000, but not Americans since more Americans voted for Gore than for Bush.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
All of that, plus the fact that if I recall, Florida had happened to have a major purge of voters (disproportionately black) who were misidentified as felons just in time to deny a bunch of votes to Gore in 2000. Which is what it took to put Bush within recount range of the White House.
W. Kiernan
I keep reading how Rafael (“Ted” my ass) Cruz is so smart, and I also remember reading about how smart Paul Ryan is, but I’m not buying it. Maybe if they were still twelve years old it would be fair to say they’re smart – I mean, how many twelve-year-olds can make it all the way through an Ayn Rand sci-fi novel, particularly toward the end where the sexy sexy sex scenes taper off and those Godawful sixty-page speeches start up? But if you’re an adult, or even a teenager, and you haven’t figured out yet that being a self-important prick who thinks of himself as an Alpha in a world of Deltas and Epsilons is really no way to go through life, then you have failed to achieve certain age-specific developmental milestones.
Lurking Canadian
@Mnemosyne:
That makes sense. Thanks.
Chris
@W. Kiernan:
“A stupid person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like” has become the profile for all Republican “intellectuals.”
The Other Chuck
@lol: Where exactly is the fraud? They’re doing precisely the thing the cap was intended for, i.e. not be an attractive robbery target. (Ok, just under 10 grand is a pretty good haul but when you know the restaurant down the street has 20 …)
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
@Elizabelle: Thanks!
goblue72
@Redleg: Which is ironic as Cruz was a Olin Law & Economics fellow in law school.
I went to law school with douches like him. Only would study with other students who also went to an Ivy. Completely pretentious know it alls. Exuded privilege out of their pores. Completely selfish and entitled prigs with absolutely no sympathy for anyone outside their social circle – which was generally small since no one could stand them.
Completely despised by their peers. Including other conservative/Republican law students. Who would gleefully join us in gunner bingo with the Cruzes of the world at the center.
Its one thing to be a winger. Its another to be a winger who wallows in it so far like a pig in its own shit.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Chris:
Funny you should say that,..
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/senate-gop-s-constituents-are-confused-about-obamacare-vote
angler
doug, you nailed it, except of course, the GOP is a declining party and the fetish for just plain a-holes may be a sign of a dwindling base.
mclaren
As Gore Vidal remarked, all the GOP wannabe-tough guys have always been “girls all the way through.”
mericafukyea
“It goes to show that all the love for Joe the Plumber was a sham”
No, it just goes to show that you are a sucker for believing any of it in the first place.
You probably also believe that the GOP sabre rattling to shut down the gov’t isn’t just another bluff like the last 2 times they did EXACTLY the same fucking thing and you believed it. Ever watch the movie ground hog day?
You are like that guy in the movie Memento with no long term memory. Or more likely it’s just more of a blogger convenience to not have one so you have shit to
trollwrite about.Thymezone
Weak post, Doug.