A colloquy of sorts is developing between myself and fellow Jacksonville (Ala.) State University alumnus James Joyner at Outside the Beltway:

A movement built on know-nothingism – indeed, outright hostility to higher education – is bound to fail.
The Republican Party will be consigned to permanent minority status if it continues down its present course. It is increasingly becoming a white, Southern party. Even though I’m both white and Southern, it’s obvious to me that we have to expand our appeal beyond hard-core Evangelicals and anti-elitists that to get back Virginia, North Carolina, the Midwest, and West.

Is Sarah Palin an emblem of “outright hostility to higher education”? How so? Because Palin, a graduate of the University of Idaho, fared poorly in an interview with Katie Couric, a graduate of the University of Virginia?

And let’s talk about all those Southern states the McCain-Palin ticket carried — Alaska, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Utah. My friend James seems to have internalized the transparently bogus liberal propaganda that if it weren’t for wool-hats and banjo-picking moonshiners, there wouldn’t be a Republican Party. (News flash: Obama won 63% among high-school dropouts.)

James doesn’t want the Republican Party identified with redneck opponents of illegal immigration (like that illiterate hillbilly Mark Krikorian) and he doesn’t want the GOP identified with dimwitted foes of abortion (like that inbred peckerwood Pope Benedict XVI). And heaven forbid any Republican should side with a knuckle-dragging homophobe like Antonin “Bubba” Scalia in dissenting against the gay-rights agenda.

Krikorian, Scalia, the Pope — they’re all a bunch of disreputable know-nothings in league with that Wasilla hockey mom in a demagogic crusade to destroy the intellectual credibility of the conservative cause.