Salon: "The Search for an Intellectual GOP Presidential Candidate"

[paul718]

This was in Salon last week, but I just came across it now.  I found it interesting because the recent neglect for intellectualism within the GOP is troubling.  Stanage highlights Daniels and Thune, while touching on Huntsman, Barbour, and Petraeus.  There's some good copy from David Frum included, as well.

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[paul718]

I want no such thing as my nominee. Someone simple and someone conservative. Unless you're talking about Newt Gingrich.

Seriously?  You don't want someone smart to be President?

I don't like this talk about how social conservatives are not intellectual.  We need someone like Marco Rubio - eloquent, hardline economic conservative, hardline social conservative and Latino.

Daniels and Thune are both socially conservative.  Thune rather emphatically so. 

Rubio hasn't set foot in the U.S. Senate, why do you want him?  And why do we need a Latino?

[paul718]

As for the question about why a Latino: We need a Latino so that the democratic party doesn't have a monopoly on Latino votes.  A Marco Rubio could engage them to come out in numbers for us like blacks did for Obama.  We can frame him as the first Latino president.  More importantly he is an anti-amnesty Latino.  He's someone who can help bridge the divide in the immigration issue and really come up with a workable plan that does not give the democratic party 10 million instant votes (which is why they want comp. immigration reform).

So you think Hispanics will vote Republican just because the candidate is Hispanic?  I'd like to think most Hispanics are more principled than that, regardless of which party they support.  I don't want to win back the White House through racism. 

Whatever else you may not like about him, I believe Newt does indeed have "genuine cerebral appeal"

I agree.  The article acknowledges Newt's intellect, but he does tend to play down to the Tea Partiers' level.

[paul718]

How about Sununu?

I could support him. 

intellectual and smart are 2 different things.  An intellectual is a scholar or someone who is educated like Obama.  Someone smart is someone who knows what decisions to make and what to do in certain situations like Ronald Reagan.  I don't want an elitist from Harvard who is "smart" according to the Ivy League.

You want somebody who is smart, but uneducated? What's the GOP's slogan going to be? Unrealized potential '12? Why on earth would you want somebody who is not educated as president?

It's mind-boggling.  Some of the comments in this thread are evidence of why I dislike the GOP and many Republican voters.