Bush and the not so bright

Apparently we tend to vote not for the sort of person who can best do the job but for the sort of person most like us. That's the point made in an article entitled, "Sweeping down the IQ curve with Bush's remaining supporters". Here's an excerpt:

Those of you who have been around for a while may have noticed something about the conservative blowhards on the net. The Freepers. The right-wing-nutjob blogosphere. Guns-and-gear forums, which teem with the kind of person I'm talking about.

The big secret: these people aren't much for the written word. They can't spell. They mangle grammar and syntax to varying degrees, sometimes to the point where they're almost unintelligible. And the worse the problem is, the more vociferous they are about supporting George Bush.

What do I conclude from this?

I conclude something we've always suspected. I conclude that Bush voters aren't very bright.

There's political theory that holds that people tend to vote for candidates who are like them.

When Gore talks, he makes a great deal of sense. The problem is, the ideas he expresses are complex; it's not easy to encapsulate him in a ten second soundbite. The same is true of John Kerry.

Bush, on the other hand, just makes statements. Simple statements. He doesn't bother supporting them. He doesn't bother explaining why. He just pronounces.

After all, why should he explain anything? He's the Decider.

Bush is very reassuring to a lot of people who aren't very bright, and for whom the complexity of modern times is a little bit scary. They're reassured by strong authority figures. People like that would like to return to the halcyon Mayberry days of an idealized 1950s with black and white televisions, baseball on the radio and the good old Sovs to hate and fear.

Nice and simple.

As the poll numbers crash, as it dawns on more and more Americans what a worldwide laughingstock we've become, it's like a needle sweeping downwards along the IQ curve. As Bush's popularity ratings sink below 30, we're going to see more and more malapropisms, misspellings and misunderstandings of the English language.

It makes a lot of sense to me. Of course, I don't frequent the "freeper" sites. In fact, I don't go there at all. Maintaining a sane blood pressure is just too important to me!