Study links conservative politics to “low-effort thinking”

Scientists in a lab inspect a readout from the Conservatometer

As a modern, intellectually engaged American, there’s nothing I like better than a study that shows something. Granted, some studies show better stuff than others. When studies show that certain organic compounds affect the reaction rate of ATP synthase, for example, I get extremely bored. But when studies show stuff that I kind of knew anyway—like people in sweatpants are less likely to know where their kids are, or coffee is good for you—I perk right up. Luckily for me, the Huffington Post exists. Yesterday they observed their bimonthly tradition of linking to a scientific study that suggests conservatives are dumber than progressives. The study in question is right here, and it’s worth reading to understand the methodology researchers used to correlate increasingly conservative views with “low-effort thinking.”

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Joe Manchin prepared to shoot unpopular legislation

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIJORBRpOPM

That’s a campaign ad for Joe Manchin, the governor of West Virginia who is currently running for the Senate. Don’t worry—it’s not 34 minutes long, though I am disappointed to tell you that he also does not have sex with a turkey. Despite that glaring omission, Manchin still manages to shock. He barely finishes introducing himself before loading a gun, announcing his endorsement from the NRA and saying he’ll “take on Washington and this administration to get the federal government off our backs.” Then he shoots a copy of the cap-and-trade bill. In this election year, even that is not surprising. What is surprising is that Joe Manchin is a Democrat.

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Frank Luntz ready to do for financial services reform what he did for health care

Pollster and Republican strategist Frank Luntz, talking about paradigm synergy or something.

Show of hands, everybody: How many of you remember, from the 2008 election, the specifics of then-candidate Obama’s plan to adjust the federal tax code and gradually undo George Bush’s tax cuts? Okay, now how many of you remember Joe the Plumber? I’m willing to bet that if there wasn’t a massive discrepancy in responses to those two questions, it’s only because Combat! is read by the fourteen smartest people in America. The rest of us don’t like tax code. We like TV, and that’s because we don’t like politics—we like stories. Amidst the blurred tangle of vaguely recollected plans that is* the push for health care reform, nothing is so memorable as the fictional Death Panel, the climactic scene in the story of a government bent on getting between you and your doctor. Don’t believe me? Nearly fifty percent of Americans do, because the difference between history and a story is that you remember a story. According to Eliot Spitzer—yes, that Eliot Spitzer—in Slate, the Republican Party is hard at work concocting another story about financial services reform, and they’ve gotten Frank Luntz to write it. Luntz was the primary author of last year’s Harry Potter and the Abortioner’s Throne, and he’s already released a teaser memo about how Republicans should talk about financial regulation. This sucker’s gonna be a sequel.

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My god, I hope this isn’t real

It's time to wrest polits away from the politians and return it to the American people, 16% of whom appear to be utter morons.

While I was languishing in the airport yesterday, beacon of vigilance Ben Fowlkes sent me the most recent Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll of registered Republicans. It is disturbing. It starts off okay, with a healthy number of respondents expressing their intention to vote in the 2010 congressional election and their reluctance to settle on a candidate for president in 2012. It’s disappointing to see Sarah Palin in the lead—and terrifying to see Dick Cheney in third—but three years ahead of the actual election, name recognition is pretty much all there is. Things start to get a little crazy with question three, in which 39% of Republicans opine that President Obama should be impeached. Exactly what crime he has committed goes unspecified, but perhaps respondents were rushing to get to the next question, in which nearly two-thirds of those polled agree that the president is a socialist. Thus begins a series of money shots, in a barrage of insanity that leaves the reader crouched numbly on the floor like a Japanese girl on the internet. If this poll is to be believed, 73% of Republicans think homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed to be schoolteachers. Seventy-seven percent want the Biblical account of creation from Genesis to be taught in public schools. Thirty-one percent want to outlaw contraception. And fully 23% of Republicans believe that their state should secede from the United States of America.

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Tea Party beats GOP on three-way generic ballot

The Tea Party candidate for President in 2012. N.ah, I'm just kidding—they would never nominate a Jew

The Tea Party candidate for President in 2012. Nah, I'm just kidding—they would never nominate a Jew

Okay, this is weird. Rasmussen Reports announced yesterday that their most recent poll shows the Tea Party beating the Republican Party by a five-point margin on a three-way generic ballot. A generic ballot pits nameless candidates against one another in a theoretical election; in this case, Rasmussen asked “If congressional elections were held tomorrow, would you vote for the Republican, Democrat, or Tea Party candidate from your district?” Democrats led the pack with 36% of the vote, the Tea Party got 23%, and Republicans finished third with 18%. Astute observers will notice that leaves 22% of those polled undecided, and also that the Tea Party does not, uh, exist. I assume the same poll found that Americans overwhelmingly reject cap-and-trade in favor of having Bigfoot drink carbon out of clouds, and want the government to stay out of health insurance so that costs can be determined by the invisible hand of David Bowie in Labyrinth.

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