I’m not a fan of Richard Cohen, but when he’s right, he’s right.
The Republican Party has had a brain drain so that now its highest intellectual achievement is — like an infant in the Terrible 2s— simply to say no to everything, especially taxes.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
Terrible 2s?
You mean the terrible 62s, 72s, and 82s…
To borrow the Bard:
Tis their second childishness of mere churlishness,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans sense, sans citizenship.
Mr. Cohen may be on to something, but who are these brainiacs the GOP previously fielded?
Might he be referring to “W” or his patrician father? “The Gipper” upstaged Bonzo, but a scholar? Surely he cannot mean Ford? That takes us back to the criminal mind of Nixon, before a semblance of a sharp knife is had in the drawer.
H.L. Mencken said it best, over and over.
I remember some intelligence in the last generation of GOP senators: Lugar and Danforth come to mind. That’s all gone now.
It may not have started the rot, but it was surely confirmed when Ronald Reagan said: ” … if [Evolution] was going to be taught in the schools, then I think that also the biblical theory of creation, which is not a theory but the biblical story of creation, should also be taught.”
Reagan may have thrilled the fundies, but he surely alienated many of even moderate intellectual attainment.
I believe the critical mass that signaled the beginning of the mutation that morphed into today’s Republican Party was reached the day R. Reagan read these words:
“Government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem”