ON REPUBLICAN SHEEPSKIN ENVY

DougJ thinks the teabaggers aren't as anti-elitist as they pretend to be:

One thing that strikes me about the current crop of GOP bad men is that they sure are an unlikely group of tough guys. Ted Cruz, a former law student so effete he wouldn't deign to study with graduates of the "minor ivies", and Rand Paul, a mild-mannered Duke-educated ophthalmolog[ist], aren't likely to spill the blood of any tyrants outside of role-playing games.

They aren't plain-spoken heartland alternatives to elite librul east coasters, they're just the even douchier former classmates of elite librul east coasters.

It goes to show that all the love for Joe the Plumber was a sham. Teahadists may decry book-learnin' but in the end they revere it.

I think they've come to the conclusion that East Coast elitism is some sort of secret weapon we use unfairly against them -- it's not that our pols actually learn stuff at elite colleges, they just get told the secret handshake and as a result go on to enslave the citizenry. Oddly, this seems to be an Obama-era obsession of the right -- the Clintons had hoity-toity degrees, but Bill was mocked mostly for being no-'count trash (i.e., right-wingers mocked him just the way they say we elitist bigots mock them).

Dave Weigel wrote about Republican elitism envy back when Newt Gingrich was leading in Republican presidential polls:

When he talks to Republicans, especially to Republican voters who may not be inclined to back him, Newt Gingrich wins them over with a promise. He will outsmart Barack Obama. He will challenge him to "seven Lincoln-Douglas-style debates," as he said last week at the Republican Jewish Coalition's confab. The president can even "use a teleprompter," jokes Gingrich. It's one of the tightest punchlines in conservative politics.

... They've started to imagine him facing off against Barack Obama, the president they consider a pure media creation who can't put two words together unless they're in blue type on a screen in front of him.

Right -- they desperately want to believe that any brainy Democrats are just putting on a stupidity-concealing act. They fear they may be wrong, however, or at least they fear that any battle of wits is going to go our way because it takes place under our rules, which rig the game. They're desperate for one of theirs to beat one of us at this game. Hence the love for Cruz, and the awe with which they talk about his degrees, his appearances before the Supreme Court, and so on. He survived by his wits in enemy territory.

Of course, there are many sources of Republican envy. Sarah Palin was supposed to trump our Hillary Clinton and close the gender gap. And they really envy our racial diversity, which is why they desperately want to find a marketable black Republican -- Elbert Guillory, Ben Carson, whoever. (Carson was actually supposed to be a two-fer, a black conservative who was an acclaimed neurosurgeon. Controversial anti-gay and pro-creationist views seem to have put the kibosh on that.)

Basically, Republicans think every vote that doesn't go to them was obtained through deceit and subterfuge.