I assume you are talking about George W. Bush. Isn’t his IQ known to be something like 128? That’s not the score of a genius, but it’s well into the superior range, putting him in the top 3% or 4% of the population. In fact, an IQ of 128 is the norm for professionals with doctoral level educations (excluding graduates of very elite institutions, where the IQ norms are higher).
George W.'s innate intelligence level is probably reasonably high. His real mental weakness is his life-long tendency toward intellectual apathy and sloth. Given his family background and privilege, George W. never needed to be intellectually astute to succeed. He learned this early in life. Thus, he was never motivated to refine himself mentally, or to grasp the essence of whatever his schoolmates and professional colleagues concerned themselves with. George W. just doesn’t care.
I am certain that Sarah Palin is much, much less innately intelligent than George W. My guess is that Palin’s IQ level is probably something like 110, putting her at the top of the average category. Maybe Palin’s IQ is 115 at most, which would make her somewhat above average. These figures are upper estimates of Palin’s intellectual prowess. I’ll bet that Palin’s IQ might even be as low as 100.
Based on how Palin sounds in interviews, I would say that she makes Dan Quayle look like Dwight D. Eisenhower by comparison. The GOP really has hit a new low with Palin. Someone on McCain’s staff really blew it.
The GOP is too smart and cunning to put Palin in front for 2012. GOP election gurus will find some other use for her. She is not White House material and the GOP knows it.
Were there any other conservative female politicians who McCain could have picked to counter Hilary? I could understand Palin as a last resort pick I guess…
Recently, thanks to another thread, I found that scientific pollsters at Stanford reported that even though the CRU email theft was used by deniers to claim that there was fraud made by the climate scientists, the impact among the people was minimal, scientists are still more trusted and only very few politicians were foolish enough to fall for the scam.
Stupid politicians like Inhofe still fell for it and so it was Palin.
Fred Pierce from the Guardian does not mince words, Palin is a liar. However the other option still remains, I still think that she is really that dumb.
They had to go that far down the ladder to find a Republican woman with any defensible credentials who was pro-life. All of the qualified Republican women (Hutchenson, Snowe, Condi Rice, even Susan Molinari) are pro-choice. McCain’s peope wanted a woman to try to snap up embittered Hillary voters, but she also had to be a pro-life, religious conservative to appeal to the Republican base, which was likewarm on Maverick. They succeeded in satisfying the base, but utterly failed in appealing to Hillary voters (who were not stupid enough to vote for someone who was both the intellectual and ideological polar opposite of Hillary just because she was a woman).
McCain himself wanted Lieberman, by the way, and still intended to pick him just days before the Republican convention before his handlers convinced him that the wingnuts would walk out of the convention. I think McCain’s choice of Palin (made with a cursory vetting on the internet and one casual meet and greet) had a degree of petulance to it. He was letting his handlers have their way, but wasn’t enthusiastic or aggressively involved in it. I think he and his people were caught completely by surprise at how inept and unqualified she really was, having assumed she would at least have the baseline level of knowledge and comprehension as the average state Governor. Once he was locked into the choice, though, he had to stay with her because he couldn’t admit he’d fucked up such an important choice (and he still can’t admit even though he refuses to say he would endorse her as a Presidential choice in 2012).
I am a fiscal conservative. I used to be a social conservative. I have mostly voted Republican. (Although the arrival of the lying asshole neo-cons (insert bushdaddy and bushbaby here) have made me question the sincerity of everything republican.
I believe the Republican Party has devolved to such an extent that it has allowed a classically rich bitch empty-headed daddy’s girl like Sarah Palin to rise through its ranks thus showing the moral and ethical emptiness of the current Republican party.
The emptiness of current republicanism allowed a classic F.I.B. (Fucking Illinois Bastard) Socialist like President Obama to take power.
He didn’t make his pick until after Obama made his. The McCain campaign was actually pretty fearful that Obama would pick Hillary (and Obama seriously considered it, but was repeatedly talked out of it by his own people), and was relieved when he didn’t. They saw that as their chance to score women by picking a woman.
He couldn’t pick Condi, though. She was pro-choice (not to mention gay, but that’s a whole other thing). She would have been a much more responsible choice, but the asking the Republican base to accept a gay, black, pro-choice woman on the ticket would have been kind of a tough sell. No one could have said she was stupid or unqualified, but intelligence and qualifications are not things the Republicvan base cares about.
Incidentally, you should check out a book called, Game Change for a really good journalistic account of what was going on in the inner circles of both the Obama and Mccain campaigns, as well as Hillary’s.
Shucks. I don’t know why I like Rice. I mean, tbh I really don’t know anything about her political views. But whenever I see her on television I’m hypnotized by her cheeks and teeth.
I remember my photography teacher in high school (the kind of guy who’d regularly tell us “Remember, there aren’t any atheists in foxholes.”) was really adamant that she’d make a great president. I thought that perhaps his view was typical of Republicans (and he was reeeeally Republican), but ah well.
Edit: Just Wiki’d her and learned that she’s got lots of liberal bent to her, but is loyal to Republicans because they were the ones who let her father vote during the era of Jim Crow laws. Apparently she’s a talented dancer and pianist, too. Not to mention super smart.
I agree with this, but I honestly believe that John McCain actually let Sarah Palin’s physical attractiveness play into his choice—I really think he was hoping/planning/wanting to actually seduce or at least fuck her, as he is a known serial-adulterer, and she fits the kind of women he is apparently drawn to.(which seems to be the MILF type, similar to the blonde lobbyist he was caught with)
Seriously, John McCain (who certainly knew he was going to lose big) chose Sarah Palin for his VP nominee in no small part so he could see her pussy. Seriously
Palin is not stupid. Willfully ignorant, certainly, but don’t confuse the two. She has a certain innate Frank Luntz-esque ability to play to mobs, as Zoe notes, and that isn’t something you find in idiots.
Sarah Palin is not “classically rich”. Her parents were a high school teacher and school administrator. Todd Palin was born to slightly better off parents, but still wasn’t rich by and stretch of the imagination.
The current Palin wealth (such as it is) was built entirely off speaking and other fees she’s collected since being named McCain’s running mate.
You can criticize Palin for all sorts of things, but growing up spoiled is not one of them.
What kills me the most about the whole pathetic mess is that I actually had a lot of respect for John McCain at one point; the man was an American hero, and he let Washington turn him into a vile piece of shit, and is now someone who is as craven, foul and self-serving as any politician in recent memory…
I disagree. Palin is both stupid (at least in comparison to her competitors) and willfully ignorant. If ever elected president, at cabinet meetings Palin would be more lost and out of touch than Reagan ever was (he couldn’t comprehend what was being discussed).
As for “playing the mobs”, I wouldn’t compare Palin to Frank Luntz. No way. Palin is more like Oprah Winfrey at “mob playing”. In these cases the speaker and her audience identify with each other on the basis of mutual stupidity.
Maybe I’m missing something, but if McCain wanted a female, couldn’t he have picked Condoleeza Rice or Christine Todd Whitman? Palin is a caricature of a politician by contrast.