Proud to be dumb?

Speaking at Liberty U (the "college" founded by Jerry Falwell), Rick Perry went all self-deprecating on the crowd about his poor high school grades. "I graduated in the top 10 of my graduating class -- of 13." The applauding audience loved it. This, apparently, is how you build GOP street cred, as WaPost's Jennifer Rubin noted. By now, everyone knows that Perry isn't a rocket scientist. And, sadly, his brain will be a liability if (God forbid) he ever makes it to the White House. But as a number of pundits have pointed out, Perry's lackluster GPA isn't the core issue. The real question is how Republicans went from a party of vibrant thinkers (think William F. Buckley) to a conglomeration of C students who proudly tout their dumbitude (Romney and Huntsman excepted). Paul Krugman captured the trend perfectly way back in 2008: "Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid. ... What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: 'Real men don’t think things through.' ” Does this mindset remind you of any recent Republican candidates and/or presidents?