In today’s New York Times, Timothy Egan declares the GOP the party of yesterday because it has lost all support among America’s brilliant metropolitan set:
Two years ago, a list of the nation’s brainiest cities was put together from Census Bureau reports – that is, cities with the highest percentage of college graduates, which is not the same as smart, of course.
These are vibrant, prosperous places where a knowledge economy and cool things to do after hours attract people from all over the country. Among the top 10, only two of those metro areas – Raleigh, N.C., and Lexington, Ky. – voted Republican in the 2004 presidential election.
This year, all 10 are likely to go Democratic. What’s more, with Colorado, New Hampshire and Virginia now trending blue, Republicans stand to lose the nation’s 10 best-educated states as well.
This is hardly news, considering “best-educated” simply means most saturated in the ideologies of today’s Democratic Party: multiculturalism, paternal governance, climate fetishization, and pacifism. The university is the number-one recruiting ground for the Democratic Party, and when college graduates settle alongside the like-minded in Seattle and New York and San Francisco, they’re well fortified against the forces of critical thought.
One would think such safety in numbers might calm the “best-educated” as they collect their paychecks and raise the next enlightened generation. But mass-psychology is a funny thing and instead of finding comfort among their kind, liberal city dwellers have found enclaves in which they can share hysteria.
Egan writes:
Brainy cities have low divorce rates, low crime, high job creation, ethnic diversity and creative capitalism. They’re places like Pittsburgh, with its top-notch universities; Albuquerque, with its surging Latino middle class; and Denver, with its outdoor-loving young people. They grow good people in the smart cities.
They also grow people like this: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQalRPQ8stI[/youtube]
When Barack Obama comes through a small town well off the brainy cities list, he’s met by a concerned plumber with a well-articulated question; when a contingent of Republican voters walk down a street in the second smartest city in America, the educated mob curse and scream. If Obama wins next week, it won’t be because of the audacity of hope in America’s cities, but the unearned euphoria of pooled outrage.
