Nerd GOP Wonks

Funny yet thoughtful article on "Republinerds". Starts out as a riff on the "One Tough Nerd" Superbowl ad, which I think is pretty effective.

Here's an excerpt from the end of the piece.

So are the nerds taking over the GOP?

I posed that question to a friend of mine, Benjamin Nugent. He wrote the book on nerds, really, "American Nerd: The Story of My People."

"It's funny that you should spring this on me. I live in Iowa City now. And Iowa City has this diner where I write every morning, where basically every politician in the country comes to," Nugent told me. "I was minding my own business and suddenly these Republicans come in and start setting up posters and they hand me the little postcard about Branstad. And it's a muskrat with glasses. The youngest person to ever become governor. He is the nerdiest!"

That's former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad. He wants to be governor again. Classic over-achiever.

"The entire tone of the event could not be more different from Sarah Palin-land or Mike Huckabee-land. Branstad had these huge glasses and looked like he got the shit kicked out of him in college," Nugent recounted. "And he makes a speech. It is the nerdiest speech. No mention of 9/11. No mention of military anything. No Palin-esque Fox News language. It was entirely jobs, balancing the budget, how responsible I am. And as president of Des Moines University, how effective I was.

"And the GOP hardliners were eating this up," Nugent added. "It made me think that my people have their moment in the GOP."

Personally I'll vote for any nerd over Mike Huckabee.