[shadowfyr]

Actually... I would dispute that, at least if "IQ" means education level. Recent poll of people at tea parties showed that they are nearly all white, male, college or higher educated, and make more than $50,000 a year. Though, I suppose you could argue that having gone to college doesn't prevent you being a complete idiot either. Why? Because a) 90% of the stuff babbled at their rallies has been lies about bills being passed, misinformation/redefinitions of words (including socialist), to scare people, and fear mongering, b) fed to them by people claiming to serve the public, which **isn't** nearly 100% white and male or making even $20,000 a year, and c) their "Tea Party Express" turns out to be a provably, by internal memos, marketing tool to hijack the idea, run up elections for Republicans, and make the company that thought up hijacking the movement millions of dollars. Which explains how and why they can afford Ms. "Show me the money if you want me to speak!" Palin, and fly her to these places on the most expensive private jets available.

Basically, about 15-20%, or less, of the American public belongs to this "movement", and they are the **exact same people** who elected Bush, and others before, based solely on their own desire to see *their* taxes cut, and everyone else screwed. Meanwhile claiming that, despite all evidence to the contrary, everyone else makes the same amount as they do, and then pushing their politicians to deregulate everything to the point where financial companies did the equivalent of buying lotto tickets off each other, instead of making sane decisions, and other companies, like Wal-Mart, pay 100% of their employees, below manager level, minimum wage only. I.e., given the hours they get to work, which might be only 20-30 a week, the guys making $30,000 a year, as managers, are outnumbered 100:1 by people making less than $18,000 a year, and those managers bosses, who make "minimum" of probably $150,000, and are outnumbered by 200:1, all think that universal health care is bad, Medicare and Medicade are suspicious, Obama is trying to ruin the economy (what more?), and the way to "fix" everything is to gut the federal government, sit around waiting for the state governments, but without, mind you, raising any taxes at all, to "fill in the holes" left in services as a result, and, of course, give even more tax shelters, tax breaks, and deregulation to... companies like Wal-Mart.

If the US economy collapses, it would be absolute proof that its possible for complete idiots to spend 5+ years getting a college education, and still come out with the IQ of a damn rock, yet manage to make more money than the people that actually have a fracking clue what is really going on.