One of my Facebook friends recently shared a photo that featured a Karl Rove quote: “As people do better, they start voting like Republicans… unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.”
The idea that educated people don’t vote Republican got me to thinking. Hmmm.
Rove was saying the Republican philosophy favors lower taxes and free-market greed and disdain for the poor, which doesn’t appeal to disadvantaged people (which makes sense). Republicanism is aimed at those who are starting to “do better,” people earning a few bucks who don’t want to share their good fortune. But the Republican ideas don’t seem to appeal to smart people with “too much education.” I suppose that would be scientists who study climate change or evolution. Or economists who know how the economy works. Or even incredibly successful people like Warren Buffett or George Soros or Bill Gates, Senior.
So let’s ponder that. We’ll assign people to a simplistic grid. Ignorant or smart. Poor or rich. Here’s the Republican base, according to Karl Rove:
I’ll rant some more below the orange squiggle of truthiness.
Here’s the Facebook post that piqued my interest
Nicely done graphics, right? But I wondered to myself, did Karl Rove actually say that? Maybe he didn’t say that.
Checking the quote
As a (relatively) smart person, I know that you can’t just trust things you read on the internet, especially on a site like Facebook. People will say all sorts of things. They might be untrue or exaggerated or crazy conspiracy theories.
I googled it. Wikiquotes said it came from the New Yorker Magazine of February 16, 2001. That’s a good start. The New Yorker has incredibly high standards for its journalists and they employ fact checkers to make sure everything they print follows the highest standards.
But Wikiquotes is edited by volunteers. So I wanted a second source.
Google also pointed me to About.com’s Urban Legends page here: G.W. Bush on Voting Republican vs. Voting Democratic. A viral email attributed the quote to G.W. and it added something about governing sheep people. Bush never said those words. The email was wrong and it was debunked. Which is fine.
But the Urban Legends page said that Karl Rove said those words in the February 19, 2001, New Yorker (not Feb 16, which is what Wikiquotes said). Here’s what they said (the New Yorker quote is the second blockquote):
Rove, President Bush's longtime political advisor, made the statement in a phone interview with author Nicholas Lemann, who quoted it in an article entitled "Bush's Trillions: How to Buy the Republican Majority of Tomorrow," published in the February 19, 2001 issue of The New Yorker.
Here it is in context:
A little while after I met with Kent Conrad, I spoke on the phone with Karl Rove, who has been the chief political strategist for Bush's entire career in elected office. Obviously, Rove was thinking past the tax cut, to a whole first-year program for Bush that could strengthen the Republican Party considerably. "Take a look at our agenda," Rove said. "Education. This year, we picked up seven points in the suburbs over '96. Our education plan allows us to make further gains in the suburbs. It will also allow us to make gains with Hispanics and African-Americans. The tax cuts will make the economy grow. As people do better, they start voting like Republicans -- unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing. Look at the course of the campaign. There's a lot of data. If you give people the choice between a tax cut and more government services, they'll choose the tax cut. The more Bush talked about an across-the-board cut, the more support for it grew. People do have a desire for basic services--schools, helping the less fortunate -- but not for unrestricted government."
Karl Rove is not a complete idiot
The larger quote provides some context about Rove was thinking. Plus you have to consider what was happening at that time, February 2001, when the New Yorker article was published. Bush had just been elected (thanks to the Supreme Court’s bullshit decision) but Bush had not yet taken office in March. The disastrous events of 9/11 (and the two subsequent wars) were several months in the future. Rove was probably thinking four years ahead to the re-election campaign. He thought the Republican party could appeal to suburban voters and Hispanics and African-Americans. He was thinking, “We’re about to take over next month. And we hope we can get re-elected in four years.” Which was true.
But he believed all of that Reaganesque Laffer-curve crap about cutting taxes stimulating the economy. So he was at least partially an idiot. (Laffer is laughable.)
The more important quote
After Rove said that thing about smart people voting for Democrats, he said this:
If you give people the choice between a tax cut and more government services, they'll choose the tax cut.
OK. But, goddammit, you fucker, when 9/11 happens, or Hurricane Katrina happens, or the banks go nuts on giving out house loans without due diligence and without government regulations (and then sell those bad loans to investors around the world without regulations), or vegetables have e. coli in them and make people get sick, that’s when people start to think, “Hey maybe we need a few more taxes and a few more regulations” to prevent this shit from happening.
Also, when Karl Rove said that in 2001, we had a balanced budget
You might remember that Clinton left office and handed G.W. Bush a balanced budget. In fact, there was a slight surplus. If we had done nothing at all (or if Gore had won the election, which he should have, if SCOTUS hadn’t intervened), the national debt would have been shrinking over the last twelve years. But no. Bush cut taxes. Then he expanded spending and the deficit. Then he crashed the economy. Plus his vice president shot a good friend in the face.
What happens when you elect people who are against “too much education?” We get eight years of unhappiness and a big putrid mess to be cleaned up by Democrats.