Just how dumb do you have to be to be a Republican?

[Cyrano]

I’m not talking about the ones who are in it for the money. You know who they are: The hate-radio whores; The Wall Street criminals; The bought and paid for politicians.

No, I’m talking about those who follow them and actually believe the crap being fed to them. Just how incredibly stupid does someone have to be to adore the drivel that pours out of Sarah Palin’s mouth? How gullible do people have to be to not grasp that Limbaugh/Beck/Hannity et al are pushing their buttons? How brain dead can people be to spend their lives opposing anything and everything that benefits them?

For the life of me, I can’t grasp what goes on inside the heads of Fox News addicts and assorted dittoheads. I know that some of them are driven by hate, some are manipulated by fear, and others are dumber than dirt. Are these the only factors that make someone a Republican?

Can anyone explain why so many spend their entire lives acting against their own best interests?

[Pharaoh]

1. sheep n/t

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

2. My personal favorites....

are the middle class Republicans who rail against the Death Tax.

Dude, if you're not going to make the wealthy pay taxes, and the poor don't have any money to pay taxes, that means YOU'RE THE ONLY FRIGGIN' ONE STILL PAYING TAXES

:banghead:

[Cyrano]

9. And it's not just the "death tax"

Anyone who buys into the Republican tax cutting mantra doesn't understand how roads get repaired, who pays teachers, cops, or firefighters, how the safety of our food and water supplies are monitored (which they haven't been for quite a while now), or how a civilized society works.

To add to my OP, just how uncivilized do you have to be to be a Republican?

[truth2power]

14. My favorite example of that..

is the YouTube video...that guy who went around interviewing people in line at the Palin book signing in Columbus, Ohio, at Jos. Beth I think.

He asked one woman what she liked about Sarah palin and the woman said palin would cut spending. The interviewer asked what the woman thought should be cut, and she said, "All of it".

Good luck to her if her house catches on fire and she has to go looking for donations so she can pay somebody to pour water on it. And including what Cyrano said, above.

Geez! People like that are too stupid to live!

[HughBeaumont]

10. Some more from the FootShooter Parade:

"Sure, offshoring is painful. But it leads to far better and higher paying jobs in the long run. Hell, in the long run, we're all dead! Heh heh heh heh heh . . ."

"CEOs aren't hiring because American workers, thanks to those damned greedy unions, cost too much money."

"The Reason the economy is bad is because the market isn't free enough!"

[Ozymanithrax]

3. It is politics as religion, not intelgence...

Many of these people are reasonably inteligent. Their political belief system simply works from that same place that religion works, and they go by faith rather than fact or logic.

[RDANGELO]

4. The human tribal instinct.

They are hooked on the notion that their group or tribe is being threatened. Once that is planted, then comes all the propaganda. People like Limbaugh are constantly stoking that tribal instinct. He is a master at it.

[uponit7771]

5. +1

[Jackpine Radical]

6. Read Bob Altemeyer (or John Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience)

to get a pretty good picture. Follow up with Westen's Political Brain and Lakoff's Political Mind.

At least one of Altemeyer's books is available for free online. Google his name and authoritarianism to find it.

[muffin1]

7. Amazing, isn't it?

You can always count on these idiots to vote against their own financial interests, simply because they can't stand the thought of same-sex marriage, or a woman being in charge of her own body. :silly:

[Cleita]

8. I prefer to call them low-information voters. I blame our system for

failing to teach them critical thinking in school and for mostly propagandizing them through media. Of course our reichwingers who are in it for the money like it that way. Anyone who gets most of their information through the media aren't going to know shit about anything. An example of this is my step daughter, who is a master gardener, so she hangs around gardening websites a lot. She knows her gardening but relies on the news at face value for everything else. There was a hit piece on Michelle Obamas' garden, put out by an environmentalist on HuffPo. He had picked up an article about lead on the White House lawn from Mother Jones, a liberal magazine creating hyperbole about the greens in the garden being toxic with lead. In fact the soil for Michelle's garden had been tested and was below the acceptable lead level for growing in an urban garden. The allegation was debunked by Snopes. However, some of the gardening websites had picked it up off this news source and the gardening websites didn't verify the truthfulness the sources. This is how misinformation gets spread. I directed my daughter to Snopes and an article in the HuffPo that debunked their own article on it. She would never have thought of doing this unless I pointed her to it.

My point is that people get a lot of information from sources they trust because the source didn't bother to verify the truth of that information to begin with before they spread it around because they thought it was true. Many people believe what comes out of Fox News is fact. They don't question it and if some blogger or website publishes this information because they feel it relates to their specialized website without confirming the veracity of what was said and the misinformation and lies find a whole new audience. This is where our problem is. Now Michelle's garden is only an example of how things can be convoluted even when there isn't a deliberate intent of spreading misinformation. Imagine how bad it is when there is that intent to misinform and sway the public through propaganda that will be picked up by other sources and spread through the media.

[hfojvt]

11. you mean people should vote Democratic

so they can get bank bailouts, mandated insurance, excise taxes, wars in Afghanistan, and continuation of DOMA and DADT?

How stupid do you have to be to believe in 'hope and change'? :P

[Cyrano]

12. Oh, give me a break. We can get taken in by Dems, but

we catch on pretty fast.

Republican-bots will stand by their maniacs no matter what.

Our problem is that we know we're getting screwed, but are still faced with the disgusting choice of voting for the lesser of two evils -- or staying home, not voting at all, and letting the greater evil win by default.

Perhaps, some day, we really will be able to change the world. Stick around for a few hundred more years.

[WT Fuheck]

13. dumb as a rock

and WAY more useless

[Generic Brad]

15. Half of America is dumber than the smarter half

We can't all be thoughtful, intelligent Democrats. Someone has to populate the lower 49%.