My friend Josh Schrei recently launched The Schrei Wire and is kicking things off with some searing commentary on the McCain-Palin ticket and the dangerous encroachment of outright anti-intellectualism at the highest levels of American politics.

There’s a simple reason why the years after anti-intellectual purges aren’t fun. Because intellectuals matter. It really shouldn’t even need to be said, but frighteningly in the current political climate, it does.

Obviously no-one in the United States is overtly advocating violence against the intellectual elite, but in metaphorical and increasingly real terms, the Republicans are waging a war pitting middle American ‘Joe Six Pack’ and ‘Hockey Moms’ against coastal elitists with Harvard degrees. Sarah Palin is the personification of this, taking George Bush’s strategy of ‘everyday speak’ to even greater heights (or lows) than George ever did. Apparently, in the Karl Rove strategy book, ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’, so much so that now the war of ‘everyday America’ vs. ‘the smart people’ is absolutely central to Republican electoral strategy.

There should be no underestimating how dangerous and toxic this strategy is. By simultaneously gutting the very educational and social programs that support and sustain ‘Joe six pack’ with one hand and with the other creating a vitriolic culture in which those who actually are educated are seen as ‘other’ and therefore not worthy of governing, the Republican party is toying with the future of this country in ways that can and will cause irrevocable damage.

We all might laugh or cringe when Sarah Palin talks about being ‘five weeks on the job’ and bringing ‘Joe Six pack’ into the white house or describes herself as a ‘pitbull with lipstick.’

What we should be is very, very afraid.

…

A nation such as ours, founded on a very heady document written by some very smart and very well educated people, should never, ever shy away from electing scholars as president. We have, and we should, embrace it.

There are two saving graces here. One is that thinking Republicans are actually starting to realize the danger that Palin — and the campaign of class war that she represents — poses to their party and are becoming more and more vocal about it.

The other is that everyday Americans have suffered the most at the hands of the current administration and many of them realize it. Hopefully more will.

Schrei goes on to make a Tom Frank-esq observation that the end result of Republican driven popular anti-intellectualism is a negative impact on those who vote for it. He speculates that electoral defeat of Palinism at the hands of Barack Obama could recenter the Republican Party and renew their Party in a more thoughtful direction.

I am not optimistic that electoral defeat will derail the path the GOP is on. The Rove-Bush-Palin chain has been successful in energizing their base for eight years. In the face of a plummeting economy, there will be a greater value in political parties embracing populist rhetoric, not a reduced one. The GOP isn’t about to start winning elections talking about corporatism and increased global hegemony — they have to rely on the culture war. And in many respects, Palinism is the addition of a strong dose of anti-intellectualism to the traditional Republican sour brew of “God, Guns, & Gays.” If anything, I expect the GOP to stir the muck even more as they face off against President Obama. It will be ugly and I shudder to think as to how deep the rabbit hole (as Schrei describes in other countries) could really go.