Free Republic

An interesting piece by Nate Silver at the New York Times. Silver compares Governor Palin's web traffic to other potential 2012 candidates and finds that there is no comparison:

It's an unresolved question whether the hyperpartisan Democratic critics of Bush have achieved or surpassed in vitriole the hyperpartisan Republican critics of Bill Clinton. Only the course of the second term will tell. Sixty-nine percent of Americans in a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll said Democrats in Congress "should find ways to compromise" with Bush. Unfortunately, the views of the 28 percent who said no compromise, even if "nothing gets done," are amply represented among congressional Democrats and the party elite. Indeed, many regard steadfast opposition as the way back to control of Congress, perhaps as soon as 2006. Could...

The Gipper and the Hedgehog How an "amiable dunce" outsmarted the world. Glenn Garvin The innate and possibly genetically mandated stupidity of Republicans has long been treated as established scientific fact; it is so utterly beyond dispute that even a ninth-grade dropout like Cher, who once thought Mount Rushmore’s heads were natural formations, can publicly declare George W. Bush "lazy and stupid" without fear of embarrassment. But however great a moron the current president is said to be, his dimwittedness pales beside that of Ronald Reagan. Even hardened journalists and academics, long resigned to their toil among the ignorant, have...