{"id":11081,"date":"2013-09-10T02:10:54","date_gmt":"2013-09-10T09:10:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=11081"},"modified":"2013-09-10T02:10:54","modified_gmt":"2013-09-10T09:10:54","slug":"dumbing-down-extends-to-the-top","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/09\/10\/dumbing-down-extends-to-the-top\/","title":{"rendered":"Dumbing Down Extends to the Top"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The Republican Party has been active at work trying to dumb down America to the extent that enough people will believe their lies to elect them.&#160; The problem with parroting lies, in this fashion, over and over again, that even the liar forgets what the actual truth is.&#160; Paul Krugman makes an excellent case that the dumbing down now extends all the way to the top.<\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"10stupid-republicans\" style=\"border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; float: left; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"10stupid-republicans\" align=\"left\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/10stupid-republicans.jpg\" width=\"360\" height=\"360\" \/>On Saturday, Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming delivered the weekly <a href=\"http:\/\/livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com\/entry\/weekly-gop-address-makes-no-mention-of-syria?ref=fpb\" target=\"_blank\">Republican address<\/a>. He ignored Syria, presumably because his party is deeply conflicted on the issue. (For the record, so am I.) Instead, he demanded repeal of the Affordable Care Act. \u201cThe health care law,\u201d he declared, \u201chas proven to be unpopular, unworkable and unaffordable,\u201d and he predicted \u201csticker shock\u201d in the months ahead. <\/p>\n<p>So, another week, another denunciation of Obamacare. Who cares? But Mr. Barrasso\u2019s remarks were actually interesting, although not in the way he intended. You see, all the recent news on health costs has been good. So Mr. Barrasso is predicting sticker shock precisely when serious fears of such a shock are fading fast. Why would he do that? <\/p>\n<p>Well, one likely answer is that he hasn\u2019t heard any of the good news. Think about it: Who would tell him? <\/p>\n<p>My guess, in other words, was that Mr. Barrasso was inadvertently illustrating the widening \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonmonthly.com\/political-animal-a\/2012_05\/the_wonk_gap037563.php\" target=\"_blank\">wonk gap<\/a>\u201d \u2014 <strong>the G.O.P.\u2019s near-complete lack of expertise on anything substantive. Health care is the most prominent example, but the dumbing down extends across the spectrum, from budget issues to national security to poll analysis<\/strong>. Remember, Mitt Romney and much of his party went into Election Day <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/8301-250_162-57547239\/adviser-romney-shellshocked-by-loss\/\" target=\"_blank\">expecting victory<\/a>\u2026 [<em>emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Inserted from &lt;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/09\/09\/opinion\/krugman-the-wonk-gap.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>&gt;<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Photo credit: <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.e-rockford.com\/applesauce\/2011\/11\/20\/the-palinization-of-the-republican-party\/\" target=\"_blank\">rrstar.com<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Click through doe the rest of this fine editorial.&#160; Doesn\u2019t Krugman make an excellent point?<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Republican Party has been active at work trying to dumb down America to the extent that enough people will believe their lies to elect them.&#160; The problem with parroting lies, in this fashion, over and over again, that even the liar forgets what the actual truth is.&#160; Paul Krugman makes an excellent case that <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/09\/10\/dumbing-down-extends-to-the-top\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}