# Are some right-wing supporters losing touch with reality? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 9, 2008, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236 "2008-10-09T21:36:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2008, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/101 "2008-10-13T07:47:44Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > No, it comes from knowing there are two sides to every story, and that when it comes to the news media one side’s position usually gets positive reportage and the other side’s position usually gets negative reportage. Sometimes, there isn’t “two sides to every story”; sometimes one side is just plain **wrong**. And that side, these days, is the Right side. > [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Why should we take news reports about the economy, the war, polls, etc. at face value when we know that the left is going to get positive spin and the right negative spin? Because the exact opposite is true. The media, including the “main stream media” you think is so left wing, is in fact heavily biased to the right. Since when have huge corporations like the media industry been “left wing” ? The idea of the “liberal media” is simply a lie promoted by the Right, to excuse away the Right’s failures and pressure the media even farther right. An example of the Big Lie technique in action; the blatant nonsense that the media is left wing has been repeated so often that many who should know better believe it. The media has spent years and years sucking up to the Right, bending over backwards to make it happy, swallowing lies like the “justifications” for Iraq and ignoring truths that the Right didn’t like ( but not even that was enough for the Right; thus Fox ); now we see the results. A discredited mainstream media, and massive problems that are too big for the media suckups to sit on any longer. > [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > But I think my position here is being taken the wrong way. I’m not trying to prove that what conservatives think is correct (though I believe it is), what I’m doing is trying to give some insight into why so many Republicans have turned away from traditional news outlets, and the fact that it has nothing to do with ‘cowering away’ from facts we don’t want to hear. And once again, garbage. The Right is collectively incapable of dealing with reality. They run away from traditional news because of the grave risk that an occasional nugget of truth will come from them. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2008, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/102 "2008-10-13T08:04:15Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > And who would be making the assessment that this hypothetical administration is incompetent? All right \*and \*left wing people. Now stop ducking the question. Here, I’ll set it out for you again, with some improvements so you have trouble avoiding an answer: If a particular leftwing administration was thought by all left and right wing people to be a bunch of incompetents, would you expect a theoretical unbiased media to run stories about them that tended to mention more negative things, or tended to mention more positive things, or that tended to mention both equally (taking it as a given in this hypothetical that _everybody_, left \*and \*right, think that this incompetent administration stuff a lot of things up)? ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2008, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/103 "2008-10-13T08:22:50Z")
I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t allow you to set the parameters on how I get my point across. I came into this thread to offer some insight as to why so many conservatives have come to turn to Fox for their information, and to put the lie to the notion that they are ‘cowering from the truth’. I didn’t come into this thread to argue impossible hypotheticals with you, thus I’m going to decline to do so. Things are what they are, and the media will behave as it will behave. Nothing you nor I could possibly say here will change that in the slightest, so what would be the point. And now, it’s late and I’m out of here. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2008, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/104 "2008-10-13T08:41:59Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t allow you to set the parameters on how I get my point across. I came into this thread to offer some insight as to why so many conservatives have come to turn to Fox for their information, and to put the lie to the notion that they are ‘cowering from the truth’. And failed to convince anyone that your excuses remotely resembled the truth, as far as I can tell. All you did is present some of the conservative’s **excuses** for running away from the truth. Excuses that bear no resemblance to reality. > [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > I didn’t come into this thread to argue impossible hypotheticals with you, thus I’m going to decline to do so. “Impossible hypotheticals” ? Like, say, what ? All you are doing - and rather obviously - is weaseling out of answering **Princhester** ’s perfectly reasonable, not-even-close-to-impossible hypothetical. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2008, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/105 "2008-10-13T08:59:50Z")
If there were a hypothetical leftwing administration that even leftwingers agreed was incompetent and stuffed things up, a hypothetical unbiased media would have to mention more negative things about that administration, simply because there would be more negative things to report. For them to report an equal number of negative and positive things in such a scenario would of course have to involve bias ie positive discrimination in favour of the adminstration. Your whole position can only work in two ways. Firstly, you could argue (as you appear to be doing) that the media _must_ be biased because it reports more negative stuff about one side than the other. The problem is that a determination that the media reports more negative stuff about one side of politics than the other is equally explicable by positing either (a) bias, or (b) incompetence on the part of that side of politics. You are ducking my question because you don’t want to admit, even in the hypothetical, that (b) is a possibility. Because if (b) is a possibility (and it has to be) then your attempt to suggest that you have any objective basis for assuming bias falls apart. The only other way your position could work is by reaching a value judgment conclusion that media coverage is not indicative of reality. In your case, you reach a value judgment that the conservative position is correct. Your protestations that it is not about the correctness of your own viewpoint are complete tosh. You don’t have any other viable argument for media bias. You don’t think that conservatives are turning away from traditional news outlets because they are ‘cowering away’ from “facts” they don’t want to hear. You think rather that conservatives are just sick of not getting the full story from traditional news outlets. But this is not based on some rational analysis of media slant. It’s based on an assumption that the conservative position is correct so there must be slant if the facts don’t suit your conservative position. In other words, you belong to a religion, and you have faith in its tenets. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2008, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/106 "2008-10-13T14:34:37Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > I would just like to point out that if it were possible to watch/listen to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC or read _Newsweek_ or _Time_ and get information that was genuinely fair and balanced, far fewer conservatives would be getting their information only from Fox. As it is, it’s virtually impossible for many conservatives to watch or listen to these programs or read these magazines without being pissed off at almost everything they say. What pisses them off is the liberal bias of the facts. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2008, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/107 "2008-10-13T17:03:21Z")
It sounds like SA feels the Iraqi Information Minister (remember him?) offered a needed alternative to the story that the Iraqis were getting their asses kicked, which clearly showed that the MSM was biased and not offering both sides of the story. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2008, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/108 "2008-10-13T17:10:19Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > What’s the point of such an exercise? And why tilt matters so far towards McCain’s side? Remember, this is from the allegedly liberal Washington Post. This analysis is just bizarro, and at variance with the underlying facts. _Yet apparently it still doesn’t pander adequately to the modern conservative mentality_, witness O’Reilly’s constant complaints about the liberal bias of that Washington paper. I think it really is a horse race question, not a political bias question. Similar to the Ellen Degeneres joke about a commercial saying (paraphrased), “What common food can kill you? Tune it at 11!” So, they would be doing it the other way around if that were the situation. I think. I’m willing to be shown to be talking through my hat. ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2008, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/109 "2008-10-13T18:31:55Z")
THIS deserves repetition. Brilliant insight. > [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > \ Maybe they’re all lawyers at heart: instead of analyzing the facts, they construct briefs that best fit their world view. And because they’re emotionally stunted, they can only imagine that everyone else does the same thing. So all fact-based analysis is seen as an invariable stand-in for an underlying ideology. Within that world, anybody that mentions a fact you don’t like is _biased_ and provokes a strong emotional reaction… This too. > [@Princhester](#): > > When true believer paranormalists fail a test of their powers, they always propose previously unknown confounding factors. How do they know these confounding factors exists? Because they must: otherwise their powers would work. The idea that their powers don’t exist is never acknowledged. It is unthinkable. Consequently, they simply posit the presence of something, often something unfalsifiable, to smooth over the gap between their unshakeable faith and the facts as reality seems to present them. > > ISTM that the conservatives you are talking about are pulling the same trick. If the story they get doesn’t suit them, there _must_ be something they are not being told. How do they know? Because the story they are getting doesn’t suit them. And their position is essentially unfalsifiable, because whatever we might say, they can always say there are some contrary facts that are not being revealed, “out there somewhere”. Further, it explains why xenophobia is so willingly accepted by “the base”. I only wish I had something equally astute to add. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2008, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/110 "2008-10-13T20:44:38Z")
**Starving** , Serious question. Have you guys finally found the WMDs in Iraq? 'Cause till you do I’ll continue to have problems sleeping. And on a different tangent, putting aside all the tripe you’ve provided as an “excuse” for some conservatives taking refuge in Faux, will you admit that what they are getting there is even further from the objective Truth than anything they might happen upon in the Oh So Scary MSM? I mean, really, do I even need to provide cites to prove to you that Fox is infotainment? Or worse yet, rigid dogmatism blind in the face of any and all evidence contrary to their (your) perceptions. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2008, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/111 "2008-10-14T03:57:08Z")
> [@CannyDan](#): > > THIS deserves repetition. Brilliant insight. > > This too. Heh. The first quote contains a degree of implied criticism of lawyers, and the second is a quote written by a lawyer. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2008, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/112 "2008-10-14T06:30:43Z")
**CannyDan** : Actually, I got the original idea some years back from an essay by Josh Marshall (_sans_ the part about lawyers :)). > [@jsgoddess](#): > > I think it really is a horse race question, not a political bias question. Similar to the Ellen Degeneres joke about a commercial saying (paraphrased), “What common food can kill you? Tune it at 11!” > > So, they would be doing it the other way around if that were the situation. I think. I’m willing to be shown to be talking through my hat. Could be. To settle this we’d need to work with more examples. Regardless, I think it’s fair to say that no organ with a leftie ax to grind would present such a bogus portrait. And no organ with a mission to inform its readers would do so either. Either way, I think it exemplifies that modern conservative complaints of Washington Post bias betray a highly sensitive disposition. **Starving Artist** : To be fair, I find network television unwatchable. It’s not the bias, it’s the inanity. I also find my retention to be lower (even for PBS), relative to the printed word or even radio. > [@Linear Crack](#): > > Also, keep in mind that if NObama was in McCains place in “The Polls” and then I posted a topic with similar “evidence” labeling it: “Are some left-wing supporters losing touch with reality?”, do you think the posts to my OP would look any different than your post? I’d guess yes (dramatically) again. Ok, but I’d argue that a higher share of Republicans have lost their grip: the Fox News crowd is appreciably larger than the Cindy Sheenan collective. That said, go back to the 1970s and early 1980s and perhaps an appreciably larger share of lefties lacked a firm grounding in empirical reality. After 1984, Democrats started to rethink and retool and gradually informed policy wonks gained more influence over the proceedings. Moving forward, I think that serious conservatives have to lay the groundwork for a similar journey. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2008, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/113 "2008-11-03T01:58:16Z")
> [@RedFury](#): > > **Starving** , > > Serious question. Have you guys finally found the WMDs in Iraq? 'Cause till you do I’ll continue to have problems sleeping. No, you see the _whole_ problem is that the military were idiots and allowed the WMDs to be smuggled into Syria. But, we went to war with the military we had, and _not_ the military we wanted. [If we had just gotten that zombi army of WWII veterans going, we would have been fine, as they knew what to do about WMDs.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage) > [@](#): > > In 1934, at Vemork, Norsk Hydro built the first commercial plant specifically to produce heavy water. It had a capacity of 12 tons per year. During World War II, the Allies decided to destroy the heavy water plant in order to inhibit the Nazi development of nuclear weapons. In late 1942, a raid by British paratroopers failed when the gliders crashed and all the raiders were killed in the crash or shot by the Gestapo. In 1943, a team of British-trained Norwegian commandos succeeded in a second attempt at destroying the production facility. Any doubts that I might have had about the WMDs were bullshit were quickly erased by our actions during the opening days of the war. If we’d have had _any_ credible evidence about WMDs (which Bush, Powell, and Rumsfeld all said we _did_), then we’d have been dropping troops into the suspected areas the **moment** the war started. We wouldn’t have even cared if they were “suicide missions” or not, since stopping or delaying the use of those weapons would be of _vital_ importance. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2008, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/114 "2008-11-03T02:05:12Z")
Oh, and before anyone yells “Cite” about Rummy claiming we knew where the WMDs were, allow me to point you to here:[http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2185](http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2185) (Note the top level domain.) And the transcript of what Rummy said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” > [@Secretary Rumsfeld](#): > > It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat. I trust I don’t have to link to Powell’s speech before the UN or Bush’s claims about WMDs. ---
**Author:** ![Desert\_Nomad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desert_nomad/32/177_2.png) [@Desert\_Nomad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desert_Nomad)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2008, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/115 "2008-11-03T08:48:46Z")
> [@Renee](#): > > This is exactly my experience with my dad. Fox news is ALL he watches. If the TV is on, it’s Fox. So any political opinion he holds he got from them. I can’t even argue with him because the crap he comes up with is so far off of reality that I’ve never even heard of it. And he calls it “fair and balanced!” Bah! Each time I visit the US I am quite shocked at the views and news sources people hold. I have seen FOX of course but watch a variety of news sources. I think if more American tuned into BBC and Al Jazeera it would broaden their world view. BBC has always been top notch and in the past few years Al Jazeera has become much more main stream. My brother in law watches only FOX and it is impossible to have normal conversations with him. He things of Al Jazeera as the “terrorist network”. I was watching it a few weeks ago in Jordan and most of the anchors were white Brits. He’d never believe me. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2008, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/116 "2008-11-03T13:17:40Z")
> [@Airman Doors](#): > > If Obama loses I think that you can look at this OP and recognize who is and who is not out of touch with reality. Or the election will have been stolen. > [@Zoe](#): > > The problem is that half of the people are below average in intelligence. I highly doubt that. More likely, it’s a curve with a long flat line in the middle, such that the middle, say, 20 to 50 percent are of roughly equal intelligence. That would mean that 20-50% of people are of average intelligence, a much more believable number (with, unfortunately, less shock value). This Carlinian idea that half of the entire population is of below-average intelligence relies on the bizarre notion of the IQ chart as a diagonal line. That really doesn’t seem rational to me. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2008, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/117 "2008-11-03T13:34:42Z")
> [@Hostile\_Dialect](#): > > This Carlinian idea that half of the entire population is of below-average intelligence relies on the bizarre notion of the IQ chart as a diagonal line. That really doesn’t seem rational to me. No. The idea that half the population is below average intelligence is based on using median averages in which, by definition, the average is the point above which and below which are equal numbers of examples. Now, if one chose to employ an arithmetic mean (average) or a geometric mean (average), one would come to different conclusions. In the former, one adds together the scores of every individual and then divides by the number of individuals. In such a case, one or two individuals with IQs of 200, or so, (and an absence of individuals scoring below 30 or so), would shift the “average” up somewhat above the median. (Geometric mean follows the same sort of method, but employs multiplication and square roots rather than addition and division). We could also employ a mode average in which the number that occurs the most times would be considered the average. In that case, the “average” could occur anywhere on the line and we could not know, in advance, whether the majority of persons would be abovbe or below the “average.” However, since IQ results, like housing prices, are routinely measured using a median score, it is always true that half the population will be above and half below average. (I suppose that one could posit a scenario in which the majority of people were exactly at the midpoint or average, but it would tend to be a fereakish statistical occurrence.) ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2008, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/118 "2008-11-03T13:43:45Z")
> [@Hostile\_Dialect](#): > > I highly doubt that. More likely, it’s a curve with a long flat line in the middle, such that the middle, say, 20 to 50 percent are of roughly equal intelligence. Why wouldn’t it be a standard bell curve? It would be highly unlikely that test results would fall any other way, in which case, the top of the bell curve is the median. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2008, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/119 "2008-11-03T14:25:14Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > (I suppose that one could posit a scenario in which the majority of people were exactly at the midpoint or average, but it would tend to be a fereakish statistical occurrence.) That would depend on the test. If the test were designed with only four possible results, you’d expect most people to hit one of them. Obviously, IQ tests are not designed with only four possible results, but the possible results might be limited in such a way that you would expect many many people to sit right at the midpoint number. Oh, and about the topic of the OP: My husband and I had lunch with my mom a week or so ago. We were talking about this and that, and suddenly: “I’m terrified of Obama. He’s a socialist!” The strange thing about this statement from my mother is that I can’t figure out exactly where it came from. She hadn’t heard of Wright, only a little about Ayers, didn’t know diddly about Palin for good or ill, but thinks Obama is a socialist. I don’t know where her news sources are right now (and she’s in China, so I can’t ask!) ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2008, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236/120 "2008-11-03T16:05:55Z")
> [@Desert\_Nomad](#): > > My brother in law watches only FOX and it is impossible to have normal conversations with him. He things of Al Jazeera as the “terrorist network”. I was watching it a few weeks ago in Jordan and most of the anchors were white Brits. He’d never believe me. :rolleyes: [Maybe Al Jazeera needs to be less “Muslim-y”?](http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=114727&title=al-jazeera-english) > [@Guinastasia](#): > > **msmith537** , **Airman** , I’m merely asking this out of curiosity-NOT being sarcastic, or trying to pull a “gotchya!”, but who are you planning on voting for? If I vote at all (New Jersey ain’t exactly a “battleground state”) I plan to begrudgingly vote for Obama. I tend to lean Republican, but that’s when it was represented by people like Ronald Regan, George Bush Sr and Rudy Giulliani. Somehow in the past decade, the Republican party seemed like it became the party of religeous fanatics, beer chugging Joe Sixpacks and NASCAR fans braying “U!! S!! A!!!” at every opportunity. I think what did it for me is Obama’s even temperedness and Palin’s retardedness. I think we need a President capable of critical thinking and not an elderly war hero and his airline stewardess running mate who bring a whole lot of gumption. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-some-right-wing-supporters-losing-touch-with-reality/467236.md?page=7)