Paul Krugman: Know-Nothing Politics. Been meaning to mention this one, since it's high time someone said this:

And the debate on energy policy has helped me find the words for something I've been thinking about for a while. Republicans, once hailed as the "party of ideas," have become the party of stupid.

Now, I don't mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly don't mean to question the often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives.

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."

Examples follow, but barely scratch the surface. Another quote:

Let's also not forget that for years President Bush was the center of a cult of personality that lionized him as a real-world Forrest Gump, a simple man who prevails through his gut instincts and moral superiority. "Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man," declared Peggy Noonan, writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2004. "He's not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world."

Well, he's put that notion pretty definitively to rest. There's more to the Republicans than just dumb; they're also aggravated and belligerent, beneficiaries of what one pundit called "voting to kill." Neither of these traits stand them at all well to cope with much less solve the sort of problems we face -- not least of which are the problems their cults of ignorance and action have put into play.