Smart Deficiency

The face of the Republican Party?

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If you turn on the television to Fox News’ own Glenn Beck, you will see the face of the Republican party and the Tea Party movement. Sarah Palin is the leading presidential nominee for 2012, and Rush Limbaugh is spewing his dogma over the airwaves.

This has been the problem that many would-be Republicans face. Depite agreeing with the economic focus that right-wing politics brings (big business, small government), intellectuals are intimidated out of becoming Republicans for many reasons.

The first is about conformity. The left has had a huge amount of support from the intellectual community since the turn of the twentieth century. Socialist views are commonplace among the political circles in Harvard, Yale, and other scholarly organizations. To be smart, it has become, is to be Democrat. For anyone struggling to accept left-wing doctrine, the pressure to agree with other brilliants has kept them from switching.

Yet this would be of little significance if the right would cater to the smarter crowd. Too often have would-be voters been turned away from political campaigns because they refused to accept putting in an idiot. Take for instance, the 2008 presidential election. Senator John McCain had a strong case until he brought along Governor Sarah Palin. She turned the Republican campaign into a joke; the sheer thought of her taking over in the unfortunate case of McCain’s death scared enough voters away.

And the icing on the cake is that the defeat did not frighten Palin out of politics, or voters from her. It only increased her potential in the field, and as of late, she has a definite chance at the presidential election.

Then there is the whole Tea Party agenda. At first, it looked like a surge of Libertarian principles, but now it seems to be little more than an explosive religious agenda led by Mr. Beck. There simply are no good turns for aspiring Republicans.

Or so it would seem. There is promise, and one of the leading 2010 candidates is Rand Paul. The libertarian Tea Party activist running for a Kentucky seat in the Senate shows the qualities of what intellectuals would feel better about from the Republicans.

Mr. Paul has Republican-esque views on issues such as abortion, illegal immigration, and same-sex marriage. The difference between him and his colleague is that he believes the decisions should be made solely by individual state. Whereas other Republicans want to impose their convictions on the country, he wants to put the states in control over what gets passed, a promising attribute.

He also recognizes the importance of free market. He opposes the Department of Education which had successfully taken communities out of schools. He is pushing for the abolishment of the Federal Reserve, giving strength back to the dollar and limiting the government’s influence over the economy. He wants government subsidies removed on everything, to allow the market to take its course.

This is where the pro-market intellectuals will feel comfortable. The force behind Mr. Paul might be strong enough to bring intellectual’s back to the core of American values, which they have distances themselves with. The Republicans, however, tend to underestimate the pull that intellectuals bring, and such a process will take time, longer than a few months.

Eventually, though, intellects will be able to decide which spectrum agrees with their views without pressure to conform coming from either side. When that happens, America will be one step closer to bi-partisanship.