Dana Milbank, blind squirrel
(d)emeritus at the
once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle, writes about the bizarre conspiracy theories and
just plain dumbassery that the Rethuglican base is awash in, and
detects a linkage:
Obama conspiracy theories have flourished in the Deep South, where wealth and educational levels are both low. This makes sense: Where voters are least informed, they are most susceptible to misinformation peddled by talk-radio hosts and the like.
For this reason, voters in reliably Republican states, which tend to be poorer, with lower test scores, are more vulnerable to misinformation. To use one measure, the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress test of eighth-grade reading, all but one of the top 10 states were in Obama’s column in 2012. Of the 19 doing worse than average, 14 were red states.
Of course, as Milbank also reports, the many Rethuglican sufferers of Obama Derangement Syndrome are more than willing to say something stupid, even if they know better,
... as a chance to register their displeasure with the president. Obama has
driven a large number of Republican voters — [Public Policy Polling's Tom] Jensen puts it at 15 to 20
percent of the overall electorate — right off their rockers.
Another variation on the theme of "Why we can't have nice things in this country."
