An email from a retired colleague and dearly beloved mentor:

The Tea Party rally yesterday and much of the discourse of late reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by John Stuart Mill:

"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. "

-John Stuart Mill

Letter to the Conservative MP, Sir John Pakington (March 1866)

Put in contemporary terms, I suppose,  while it is not the case that the Republicans are generally stupid, stupid people are generally Republican.  As we shall see in November.  (The question at hand, of course, is how many "Independents"  will prove Mill's axiom as well.)