Santorum, please go away

Santorum is in the news for saying, “we will never have the elite, smart people on our side."

Well if you want them on your side, that’s the wrong way to go about it. And any political movement with only stupid people is doomed.

As I wrote earlier this year, “Once the primaries move to Romney-friendly areas of the country, Santorum is finished. Good riddance. The GOP needs smart people like Romney, not religious nuts with unexceptional mental abilities.”

Comments

[James McKeane]

How's that "smart" Romney fella doin BTW?

Yeah didnt think so.

[JayMan]

Hey, this is your party...

[IHTG]

What the hell? Statements like that make one think Santorum is aware of HBD, but thinks Christianity trumps it anyway.

[anonymous]

I think the republicans need to come up with a "dog whistle" or, at least, a new term for referring to the liberal elite. Elite sounds good. I'm ok with being ruled by a natural elite. The people who are "the elite" today are not "elite". GOP is making them sound like something they are not. Neo-aristocrats maybe. Too complicated and hard to say but it's a start.

[E. Rekshun]

OT. http://www.usatoday.com/money/business/story/2012/09/14/jobs-fight-haves-vs-the-have-nots/57778406/1

Marc Adreessen, founder of NetScape discussing the future job market tells USAToday "The spread of computers and the Internet will put jobs in two categories," Andreessen says. "People who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do...study STEM"

Of course the thick-headed pie-in-the-sky liberals commenting on the piece still whine about "follow your dreams" and how critical the liberal arts majors are.

[asdf]

JayMan,

In fairness Jayman, the Democrats are the party of the ghetto. All parties need to appeal to the proles, there are just so many of them.

[Secret of NAM]

Either ...

Santorum was being sarcastic.

Or

He was stating that atheistic Jews and co. will continue to side with the lumpenproletariat against Middle (white Christian) America.

Nothing wrong here.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"How's that "smart" Romney fella doin BTW?

Yeah didnt think so."

Mitt's doing pretty good considering he and his super PACs have only over the past 10 days started to spend serious money on attack ads in swing states.

According to Rasmussen, Romney is behind by one point in Ohio and Virginia. SurveyUSA, which is often the most accurate pollster, has Romney behind only by one in Colorado and only back 4 in Florida.

Romney's poll numbers have been at a disadvantage because Obama has been burning cash running ads in swing states since the summer while Mitt has been saving his cash for the last 2 months.

As Romney puts his cash advantage to good use, I expect he will pull ahead in the key swing states.

Btw, does anyone know what partisan D/R/I weights Rasmussen has been using in his daily popular vote poll?

I've noticed Rasmussen's numbers at the state level are much more favorable to Romney than his popular vote totals. This makes me suspect Rasmussen is somewhat oversampling Democrats.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"Of course the thick-headed pie-in-the-sky liberals commenting on the piece still whine about "follow your dreams" and how critical the liberal arts majors are."

Every college department where the faculty and students use the term "narrative" every other sentence, AKA, everything that is non-STEM or business, needs to be defunded.

Btw, I've modified my proposal to eliminate gened requirements (because the gened overwhelmingly focuses on liberal arts classes for non-liberal arts majors) and replace them with a 60 credit bachelor's program.

I now want to combine Scott Walker's proposal to let anyone test out of any class, including 300 and 400 level courses, with my 60 credit/no gened proposal.

The advantage of Scott Walker's plan is that anyone can test out of classes that are required for their major. The liberal arts are the easiest 300 and 400 level classes to test out of.

Because liberal arts classes are easy to test out of, many liberal arts majors will be able to skip classes entirely and instead test out of many or all of their major requirements. Being able to test out of liberal arts major requirements will further starve the cancerous liberal arts tumor of money, especially if non-liberal arts majors (about 80% of all college students) are allowed to automatically skip out of the gened requirements entirely and earn their bachelors degree by taking only 60 credits.

[T]

E. Rekshun: that prediction didn't come true and won't come true. The elite will always refuse to act through computers. They want to control people in person. It is in their DNA. The elite are basically smarter proles with some middle-class admixture. The liberal-arts are great majors if you want to be elite.

[lcs]

So Santorum's anti-intellectual crusade is back in full swing. Equating smart people with elitism, snobbery and most importantly, branding them as outsiders is a long established and well-received American tradition. But Santorum's sanctimonious, sneering ridicule turns my stomach.

[Rufus]

Truth hurts, Sig.

[Rufus]

"I'm ok with being ruled by a natural elite. The people who are "the elite" today are not "elite"."

-----------------

How are they not a natural elite. With their high IQ, good looks (including height), fine breeding and excellent education, they continue to run rings round the rubes.

The masses don't stand a chance.

[CH]

"I think the republicans need to come up with a "dog whistle" or, at least, a new term for referring to the liberal elite."

equalists.

hypocritical equalists, but equalists nonetheless. the term has a nice, ominous ring to it, similar to communist and fascist.

[Insider]

'Every college department where the faculty and students use the term "narrative" every other sentence, AKA, everything that is non-STEM or business, needs to be defunded.'

Why?

Philosophy, economics, political science, and psychology strike me as worthwhile liberal arts degrees for their educational value.

'How are they not a natural elite. With their high IQ, good looks (including height), fine breeding and excellent education, they continue to run rings round the rubes.'

+1.
If you've ever been to a party of elites (although, if HS's theory about the true upper upper class is right, then I suppose the lower end of the elite), you can sense it immediately. Any edge you believe you have in life---intellect, good looks, wit, charm, etc...---a lot of these people were blessed abundantly with all of them. And they know it.

[Mason]

A lead on the War Nerd. Here's a pretty interesting piece-

http://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/war-nerd-obamas-wars

Let's spend our weekend talking about something cooler than Rick Santorum.

[destructure]

"I think the republicans need to come up with a 'dog whistle' or, at least, a new term for referring to the liberal elite."

I don't have a problem with elites. I have a problem with liberal elites because they are self-righteous and hypocritical. So I would probably use the terms 'self-righteous elitist' and 'elitist hypocrisy'.

***

"How are they not a natural elite. With their high IQ, good looks (including height), fine breeding and excellent education, they continue to run rings round the rubes." -- Rufus

As a group, the so-called elite are statistically above average. But most of them are nowhere near the best in terms of brains and looks. Most of the brightest, good looking, etc come from non-elite backgrounds.

[Joe Walker]

Who cares about the elites? For one thing they are a minority of the population and secondly they usually support anti-white and anti-American political movements such as the Civil Rights movement. It was the elites who gave us the affirmative action and welfare programs that have not only stopped the black population from dying out but have actually given them an economic incentive to reproduce thanks to such idiotic social programs as food stamps.

[not too late]

Using Karl Marx's terminology, wouldn't his proletariat really be what we call betas?

The productive guys who show up and work, etc., but don't profit commensurate with their contribution. And wouldn't Marx's capital class kind of be like our rich alphas who profit for reasons other than productivity and merit?

[Conquistador]

"Romney's poll numbers have been at a disadvantage because Obama has been burning cash running ads in swing states since the summer while Mitt has been saving his cash for the last 2 months." - TUJ

Romney doesn't have much choice but Obama has the better strategy. While Romney uses his cash near the end the president himself will make dozens of campaign stops in those very areas. Be real when the prez comes to Hickoryville USA it's big news.

[Conquistador]

@ Insider

Our kind is going extinct. What do I mean? In the near future society will be totally stratified based on IQ, looks, and class. Guys like us are the last to have experienced different sides of the social divides. What you see in dystopian sci-fi will be reality. With it will come to an end our unique experiences.

[lil mike]

Although I agree with HS that Santorum needs to go away, his quote is being spun as if Santorum thinks if you are smart enough to fog a mirror, you're too smart to vote Republican.

What he actually said: "We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite, smart people on our side,"

That sounds to me as if he is clearly referring to self described smart people who surround the Obama administration like a Praetorian Guard. The Elites, who derive their power either directly through government or through influencing it (like the media) are of course never going be on the side of small government types, which ironically, Santorum isn't one.

[Jeff]

Republicans need to infiltrate the elite and cause fissures in the elite, convincing some of them to get on board to oppose the more "elite" elites who vote Democrat.

Santorum is a populist social conservative and is a fairly smart one himself. He is very insightful as to the real problems facing this country. But he scares suburbanites.

[anonymous]

Rufus is trolling.

[anonymous]

Not that he doesn't sincerely believe the dumb shit he said, but he phrased it in such a way as to deliberately piss us off.

[trumwill]

The Republicans may be in some rather serious danger of losing the currently red suburbs on their current trajectory. It's one thing to play the red suburbs against the coastal elites and remind the suburbanites that "Hey, those elitists don't like you."

It's going over the bend when you cater to ruralia so much that you're essentially telling suburbanites that we don't need any of their high-falutin' smarts.

The GOP cannot afford to lose the suburbs. That includes a lot of bright professionals who really don't want to be associated with a party that becomes too Palinesque.

[JP]

What we are seeing today is that it doesn't matter if you are "smart" if you are a Republican, because the media will pounce on self-evidently TRUE statements and trumpet that you have made "stupid gaffes".