You've got to hand it to the GOP

[Still Sensible]

A little over three decades ago they figured out how many stupid people there are in the country and they perfected various quite successful means to get nearly every damn one of them to vote republican.

Of course, they keep doubling down on that strategy... and thanks to the tea parties they have spawned, they finally may have gone one step too far.

[FarLeftFist]

1. I hope none of the tea-baggers....

Defile any farm animals, leave empty liquor bottles, or burn any crosses. But then how else would they have fun.

[JohnWxy]

5. Hey, you're interfering with their right to the pursuit of happiness! Of course, when it comes to

threatening people or cutting gas lines that happiness become criminal...oh, I forgot, their being 'patriots'.

[Jade Fox]

2. They created their own Frankenstein monster....

who can only continue to harm them by dividing the Republican party.

[calico1]

3. This is why being a "real" American means

being dumb as a box of rocks and being educated is "elitist." That's what they promote.

And the blind followers eat it right up.

It is in the best interests of the GOP to have uneducated, uninformed masses. That's why they are so against education.

[theoldman]

4. Many years ago a ship caption heard rumors of a possible mutiny.

He asked his first mate if any of the sailors could read. The first mate identified two. The captain said hang them. Get the point?

[Bonhomme Richard]

6. They couldn't do it without the media.n/t

[Still Sensible]

7. Absolutely, the media gives them a legitimacy

they don't deserve. In our youth the media treated crackpots as crackpots! The birchers and klanners and militias were the lunatic fringe and were so treated by the media. Now much of the media serves as a recruiting tool for the monied interests to attract non-thinkers.

Of course for all the benefits of the Internet age, I also believe the web gives them an easier community that helps them recruit and pumps them up by giving the illusion their numbers are larger than they are. Unfortunately, as a result of the media treatment and the web, I think they have grown their numbers to about twice the size of the lunatic fringe that existed five decades ago.

There have probably always been this percentage of people that would have been vulnerable to such bullshit, but media legitimacy coupled with the far reaching, relatively inexpensive advertising toll of the internet, the crackpots find them and bring them to the cause.

[MindandSoul]

8. It's actually a very successful strategy!. . .It's so much easier to control dumb people who will

believe any story you tell them, then intelligent ones who may actually research the veracity of your statement!

[MajorChode]

9. The strategy has always ultimately backfired on them

They have used the same strategy many times in the past with some short term success. The problem is, when you pander to the lowest denominator you alienate those in the middle. The lowest denominators eventually lose interest in voting in favor of moon pies, tractor pulls, and WWE wrestling, but those in the middle have much longer memories. That's why the Republican party has always had relatively short spikes in power and very long runs of irrelevancy.

[Danascot]

10. "You can't fix stupid."

- Ron White