42 thoughts on “Our Idiot Electorate”

  1. Hmm, idiots like Republican policies. I’m not sure this is a selling point.

  2. Yes, even idiots like them. What makes them idiotic is that they engage in ad hominem illogic in disliking them only because they come from Republicans.

    1. I know that’s what you meant, but I think this is an argument that will backfire rhetorically.

      1. It puts in question whether these idiots should be voting at all. However, it does make sense when you look at it from the makers vs. takers perspective.

        Responsibility isn’t something they want to hear.

        1. However, it does make sense when you look at it from the makers vs. takers perspective.

          Yes, that is a very simple hypothesis with a lot of explanatory power. Not just in politics, but in banking and economics too. They’re all intertwined anyway.

  3. It probably means not so much that people are idiots, as that the Left’s primary (“education”) and secondary (media) indoctrination machines are very effective.

  4. Actually it just shows you how much the Tea Party fringe has damaged the Republican brand.

    Plus folks have wise up to know that what Tea Party Republican says while running and what they actually do once elected are not the same.

      1. Good old Rand, head still in the sand.

        If you bothered to look beyond the Blog you linked to you would had seen the poll was done by Pulse Opinion Research which says it all 🙂

      2. “Derangement” is putting it mildly Rand!! BTW, Thomas, I’m still waiting for my official Tea Party Membership Card and Secret Decoder Ring so I can make sense of those weird messages I (and you too, apparently) receive when we remove our tinfoil headgear.

        1. Ed,

          That was one of the lessons learned from the failure of the JBS. Denial is easier if you don’t keep membership lists and or have an official magazine. It makes it much easier to avoid responsibility, just as hiding your identity online does 🙂

    2. If we are ever to fix the problems Thomas, that fringe needs to remove the mandarins or their is no hope. The reason we are where we are is because the difference between D and R is not significant. You can’t blame that on the tea party.

    3. No, it’s the Republican establishment old-boy network that has destroyed the Republican brand.

      The Tea Party is like a shot of new blood into the party, but the insiders perceive them as a threat and are hostile to them.

      1. rickl,

        Gee, you have the Tea Party talking points down well. Here, have a view of how the rest of the world see the Republican Party,

        http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-gops-real-agenda-20130313

        The GOP’s Real Agenda

        [[[On the ground, a very different reality is unfolding: In the Republican-led Congress, GOP-dominated statehouses and even before the nation’s highest court, the reactionary impulses of the Republican Party appear unbowed. Across the nation, the GOP’s severely conservative agenda – which seeks to impose job-killing austerity, to roll back voting and reproductive rights, to deprive the working poor of health care, and to destroy agencies that protect the environment from industry and consumers from predatory banks – is moving forward under full steam.]]]

        No wonder voters don’t trust them.

        1. OK, so I “have my head in the sand,” and Rolling Effing Stone is the “rest of the world.”

          That, gentleman and ladies, is the planet from which Tom Matula posts.

          3. Rand,

            Well you sure don’t act like a Democrat, although you do claim that last President you voted for was Jimmy Carter….

          4. “Well you sure don’t act like a Democrat, ”

            While you sure do act like one. Or, to be more precise, a lib-dem.

            You lost any credibility you might have had when you declared the TP dead….and then….recanted.

            We can all see you just need a punching bag so connection with reality is superfluous with you.

          6. Rand,

            Perhaps this will refresh your memory…

            http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=29253&cpage=1&wpmp_switcher=mobile

            [[[by Rand Simberg on September 20, 2010 at 9:49 am
            Posted In: Media Criticism, Political Commentary

            I’ve only voted for one presidential candidate in my life who won (Jimmy Carter, and I’d like that vote back), and most of my political life has been out of step with the country]]]

            So now you are saying you didn’t vote for President Carter?

          8. Rand,

            I see you are splitting hairs again. Its considered good etiquette in an informal setting (like a blog) to refer to someone by their highest office even after they are no longer in it.

            http://www.emilypost.com/forms-of-address/titles/118-addressing-a-former-us-president

            The fact is you voted for President Carter even though he wasn’t yet president since it was still the election. He “earned” the title because of winning it.

            I would think to make up for your mistake in 1976 you would have voted for President Reagan instead of some third party candidate with no chance of winning.

            Fortunately enough voters were smart enough to do so helping to save American from a second Carter Administration.

  5. “Plus folks have wise up to know that what Tea Party Republican says while running and what they actually do once elected are not the same.”

    Moby Matula–ala “Uncle Tom”–would no doubt want Tea Party candidates to be as anti-statist in office as they are while running for office. Because, you know, he’s so pro-freedom!

    1. Bilwick,

      So it is OK with you if the Tea Party wants the state in your bedroom, national ID in your pocket and telling teachers what they should teach?

      Things that would have horrified the founding fathers they claim as heroes…

      1. Yes. This is rich coming from the side that wants to micro-manage what sort of light bulbs I can use, how big my soda can be, how much water gets used my my toilet, and on and on and on.

        The only things the Progressive Leftists like Matula don’t want to regulate are obscenity and sex. Everything else is fair game to them.

        Tell you what– we on the libertarian and conservative side will ignore what you do in your bedroom when you start ignoring what we do in our living rooms, our kitchens, our bathrooms, our garages, our back yards and every other aspect of our lives. But you won’t, will you?

        (as for teachers, if they don’t like being told by their employer, in this case the gov’t, what they can and can’t do, they can find a job somewhere else with an employer more to their liking. Besides, its your side that sets all the agendas any more. And IDs? It’s your side that makes me show an ID to get into any gov’t office building or carry out any transaction regulated by the gov’t or to even buy cold medicine. So, nice try there.)

        1. R Ortega,

          You illustrate my point well. Because I am a Republican that doesn’t buy into the Tea Party fringe you automatically group me with some nutty liberals, I am not any have NEVER advocated mandating light blubs or other such nonsense.

          I am also not surprised you think its OK for schools to force science teachers to teach creationism instead of evolution. The connection between the Tea Party and the old religious right is well documented.

          Which proves exactly the accuracy of the RNC report which discusses how the public, thanks to the Tea Party fringe, see Republicans as narrow minded and out of touch with America. Thanks for illustrating the report by showing the Tea Party mind set at it most extreme 🙂

          2. Al,

            Better than voting for a third party candidate that was pretending to be a Republican. And has since returned to the AIP she came from.

      2. So it is OK with you if the Tea Party wants the state in your bedroom, national ID in your pocket and telling teachers what they should teach?

        The Tea Party is interested in none of those things.

        1. Rand,

          Funny, because that is what the folks the Tea Party supports seem to focus on once in office.

          But them, that is the slippery nature of the Tea Party 🙂

  6. The GOP’s problems with PR predate the TP and the treatment the TP received from the media is just more evidence. TM totally fell for the false narative and doesn’t even realize the irony of his comment on this topic.

    1. Wodun,

      Nope. The reality is that you and the rest of Rand’s followers were conned by a well planned, well organized astroturf narrative and won’t admit it.

      I understand why Rand won’t admit it, he is associated with the CEI after all. But no one knows who you are…

    2. More to the point, the GOP elites were seduced then bought by the Washington Insider Power Group. Meaning that they forgot who they were and gloried in the high power, lavish politics of DC. Stayign in office means more to them than voting their principles.

      DC can be very seductive.

      The TP is a revolt against that, and is really independent of Party. TP candidates live and vote their principles; GOP elites sell out the Constitution for perks and power, as do the Dems.

      1. “This is getting more insane by the post.”

        I’m guessing this isn’t the first time the words “insane” and “Thomas Matula” have been linked.

  7. It’s because of threads like this that I am embarrassed on those rare occasons when I find that Matula agrees witgh something I’ve said.

  8. The reality is that you and the rest of Rand’s followers

    But Thomas, you are one of Rand’s followers (I assume you mean readers of this blog since I can’t think of anything else you might mean.)

    It is really unbelievable how you throw astroturf around. Are there moneyed people involved in various TP groups. Of course, and others that would like to run to the head of the parade. But it takes a unique type of myopia not to see that most TPers come from the ranks of people that are so disgusted with politics that before the TP didn’t get involved at all.

    Like many in the lame media, you paint every TPer with whatever subset you think will discredit them all. It is a diverse group, which makes that villainous tactic possible. But there is only one thing that unites all TP. Tax Enough Already and it’s corollary, smaller govt.

    1. Ken,

      Two points. First, ever hear of the saying “If you lie down with dogs, you will get up with fleas”?

      If you support a Republican just because they say the magic Tea Party buzz words then you should expect to be branded with what ever other crazy polices they are pushing once in office. Especially if you don’t denounce such polices.

      Second. actual research shows that the narrative of the Tea Party consisting of folks that were not involved in politics is generally false.

      http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2010/10/tea-party-closely-linked-to-religious-right-poll-finds/

      [[[ABC News’ Huma Khan reports: Nearly half of those who identify with the Tea Party movement are part of the religious right, according to a Public Religion Research Institute poll released today.

      Eight out of ten Americans who identified with the Tea Party were Christians and 47 percent said they were part of the Christian conservative movement, the poll found.]]]

      So you and others who follow Rand are in the 20% minority of Tea Party members, So what? There are always some outliers in any political movement.

      But the data shows the mass majority of the Tea Party are just the Moral Majority in a new coast of paint, which explains why they ignore the folks on the old Moral Majorities core issues like abortion, strict marriage laws and forcing schools to teach creationism once elected.

      But of course we all know the last cite is wasted here as one thing the majority Tea Party doesn’t buy into science and research in general, let alone research in the complex sciences.

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