[grey_whiskers]

The problem with the Republican party is it's done very little to appeal to educated (or even critically thinking) voters.

It's a common malady among the educated (yes, I'm a card-carrying member; PhD in molecular collision theory) to assume that education = wisdom.

The proper answer to that is that Bill Clinton has a Yale Law Degree and tried to parse the word "is".

Another example is George Bush who has an MBA from Harvard; and of course Paul Krugman who just won a Nobel Prize in economics -- for decades old work, but all the libs will pretend that this validates all his current ramblings, while continuing to ignore Friedman.

Cheers!

[Arguendo]

I wasn't really saying the Republicans need to nominate candidates with top degrees to appeal to educated voters; I was saying they need to use rhetoric that appeals to educated voters. Reagan and Gingrich (while still looked down upon by true elitists) appealed to educated voters because they make intellectually defensible policy arguments rooted in a coherent conservative philosophy. Contrast this with McCain and Bush, who seem to have little guiding philosophy and thus say or done things that are anything but conservative (and very hard to defend intellectually) on a regular basis.

McCain's recourse to earmarks when asked how he can cut the budget last night demonstrates this: it's a worthy goal, but he missed a great opportunity to make a broader conservative argument for cutting government. And if my party's leading candidate can't make that argument, how can I as a conservative say I'm voting for the Republicans because I believe in smaller government?

Similarly, back in 2004 Bush was asked about the minimum wage. Instead of using the opportunity to explain conservative opposition to the minimum wage--explain how it actually hurts many of its intended beneficiaries--he basically said he supports an increase, just not as big as the increase John Kerry supports. And I'm supposed to tell people they should vote for the Republicans because the Republicans believe in the free market?