So what do you think MTG’s stupidity to malice ratio is?
In a sense, everything she says and does is malicious, but I think an awful lot of it isn’t technically motivated by malice - it’s just that she’s angry and stupid, so it just ends up also being malicious.
50/50? 60/40? 40/60?
I don’t think it’s any less than about 30% stupid, and I’d be surprised if it’s even that low. Yes - it’s certainly possible for a politician to cultivate an air of stupidity as a disarming cover for their malice, but I just don’t think she has it in her, and particularly not for an extended period. She really has to be, at least to some notable degree, pretty much as angry and stupid as she appears.
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That was basically my view for a long time (though phrased much more entertainingly than I likely ever could have), but I’ve started to think that at least some portion of it is conscious malice - that she’s not as stupid as she appears.
Boebert, by contrast, clearly is as stupid as she appears. Admittedly, MTG could just have better instincts (they couldn’t hardly be worse), but I think it’s more likely that there’s at least some faint spark of intelligence there, such that she can at least sometimes recognize a particularly useful situation in which to unleash her anger and stupidity.
Or maybe not…
