Since when did R lost media and intellectuals?

[Skill and Chance]

It has to be considered who is in the intellectual class and why.

Prior to a certain point, the only people who got higher education were mostly people who were already rich and this would create a skew of its own. Add to that the dominance sources of employment for higher educated people would have been business or industrial related either directly or as professionals that serviced said industrial economy, so it all ties back both demographically and economically to a pro-Republican stance.

This began to change in the 1930s with greater government support for academia and other similar fields, meaning that finance and industry were not the only game in game and the supporting cast of professionals thus serviced a combination of business and government related industries as well.

Add to that the effects of the GI bill and the gaining of access to higher education by more and more non-WASPs, and over time you get a shift towards the Democrats and the left.

I don't think this was true back then.  Most of the famous 19th century industrialists and inventors weren't college graduates.  Vanderbilt didn't even learn to read until he was in retirement!  Education in that era was something you did for social status after becoming wealthy, not something that brought wealth.  On a middle class level, it was pursued by people who wanted to be local schoolteachers or professors or lawyers, not by people who wanted to become wealthy in industry. 

It took quite a while for production and management to get complicated enough to make higher education more beneficial than work experience for aspiring business owners, let alone required to become wealthy in industry.  You could say we are only just now seeing the political impact of a world where education is what makes most people rich.

[Skill and Chance]

It has to be considered who is in the intellectual class and why.

Prior to a certain point, the only people who got higher education were mostly people who were already rich and this would create a skew of its own. Add to that the dominance sources of employment for higher educated people would have been business or industrial related either directly or as professionals that serviced said industrial economy, so it all ties back both demographically and economically to a pro-Republican stance.

This began to change in the 1930s with greater government support for academia and other similar fields, meaning that finance and industry were not the only game in game and the supporting cast of professionals thus serviced a combination of business and government related industries as well.

Add to that the effects of the GI bill and the gaining of access to higher education by more and more non-WASPs, and over time you get a shift towards the Democrats and the left.

I don't think this was true back then.  Most of the famous 19th century industrialists and inventors weren't college graduates.  Vanderbilt didn't even learn to read until he was in retirement!  Education in that era was something you did for social status after becoming wealthy, not something that brought wealth.  On a middle class level, it was pursued by people who wanted to be local schoolteachers or professors or lawyers, not by people who wanted to become wealthy in industry. 

It took quite a while for production and management to get complicated enough to make higher education more beneficial than work experience for aspiring business owners, let alone required to become wealthy in industry.  You could say we are only just now seeing the political impact of a world where education is what makes most people rich.

How does one bold a section and then make a counter point that is practically stated in the sentence just prior to where said bolding starts?

Prior to a certain point, the only people who got higher education were mostly people who were already rich and this would create a skew of its own.

The next line starts "add to that" meaning it is an additional supporting point to that.

However, I would challenge the notion that every rich person was an inventor or shed tinkerer who struck it rich.

I also outright stated that as you said few people sought higher education, however those that did were most certainly pulling from a select group that is already wealthy.

I think our disagreement comes from the idea that people prior to ~WWII went to/sent their kids to college with the goal of making more money.  I think this explains the divide between business elites (near uniformly conservative until like yesterday) and academic elites (which had a significant left leaning block even in the 19th century).  The latter simply weren't concerned that much about making money and were probably downwardly mobile, albeit from a very high starting point. 

The pre-WWII wealthy weren't primarily inventors, no, but there is compelling data that a majority of the very rich in each generation since roughly the time the US was founded have been people pursuing some kind of successful entrepreneurship.  Since industrialization, there's been enough turnover among the very wealthy that at any given time a majority are self-made.  In modern times, this is true both at the billionaire level and at the $30M level.  Think about just how difficult it is to keep your family elite level wealthy for several generations?  Even if taxes are low and your children and grandchildren care about maintaining the fortune as much as you do and don't blow the money, they had better be only children or what's left is split 32+ ways very quickly!