The Right-Wing, Stephen Colbert, and Know-Nothing Politics
August 08, 2008News & Politics
The Colbert Report is hilarious because Stephen Colbert's caricature of right-wing blowhards is so eerily accurate. Colbert doesn't believe in "reading books," he believes in his "gut." He listens to his "rage." He admires the "Alpha Dog of the Week."
And why does Colbert sound like so many of today's Republican Party leaders? Because, as Paul Krugman explained extremely well today, the GOP has "become the party of stupid."
What I mean ... is that know-nothingism -- the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there's something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise -- has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party's de facto slogan has become: "Real men don't think things through."
