A controversial Canadian study says that right-wingers (conservatives) tend to be less intelligent than left-wingers, and people with low childhood intelligence tend to grow up to have racist and anti-gay views.
The Canadian academics say conservative politics work almost as a “gateway” into prejudice against others.
The study, by academics at Brock University in Ontario, Canada, analyzed large UK studies which compared childhood intelligence with political views in adulthood across more than 15,000 people.
The authors claim that people with low intelligence gravitate towards right-wing views because they make them feel safe.
Crucially, people’s educational level is not what determines whether they are racist or not – it’s innate intelligence, according to the academics.
Social status also appears to play no part.
The study, published in Psychological Science, claims that right-wing ideology forms a “pathway” for people with low reasoning ability to become prejudiced against groups such as other races and gay people.
“Cognitive abilities are critical in forming impressions of other people and in being open minded,” say the researchers.
“Individuals with lower cognitive abilities may gravitate towards more socially conservative right-wing ideologies that maintain the status quo.
“It provides a sense of order.”
The study used information from two UK studies from 1958 and 1970, where several thousand children were assessed for intelligence at age 10 and 11, and then asked political questions aged 33.
The 1958 National Child Development involved 4,267 men and 4,537 women born in 1958.
The British Cohort Study involved 3,412 men and 3,658 women born in 1970.
It’s the first time the data from these studies has been used in this way.
In adulthood, the children were asked whether they agreed with statements such as: “I wouldn’t mind working with people from other races” and “I wouldn’t mind if a family of a different race moved next door”.
They were also asked whether they agreed with statements about typically right-wing and socially conservative politics such as: “Give law breakers stiffer sentences” and “Schools should teach children to obey authority”.
The Canadian researchers also compared their results against a 1986 American study which included tests of cognitive ability and questions assessing prejudice against homosexuals.
The authors claim that there is a strong correlation between low intelligence both as a child and an adult and right-wing politics.
The researchers also claim that conservative politics is part of a complex relationship that leads people to become prejudices.
“Conservative ideology represents a critical pathway through which childhood intelligence predicts racism in adulthood,” says the paper.
“In psychological terms, the relation between intelligence and prejudice may stem from the propensity of individuals with lower cognitive ability to endorse more right wing conservative ideologies because such ideologies offer a psychological sense of stability and order.
“Clearly, however, all socially conservative people are not prejudiced, and all prejudiced persons are not conservative.”
[googlead tip=”vertical_mic”]Republican Michele Bachmann, 55, won the Iowa Straw Poll Saturday, affirming her status as a top-tier candidate in the Republican race to challenge President Barak Obama in 2012.
Michele Bachmann received 28% of the nearly 17,000 votes cast. The Texas Republican, Ron Paul was close behind her with 27%. Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty came in a distant third with 13% of the vote, followed by former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum with 9% and businessman Herman Cain with 8%.
Michele Bachmann received 28 percent of the nearly 17000 votes cast
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The daylong political festival was the first indication of how these Republicans are faring with the Grand Old Party (GOP) base. Nine candidates were on the ballot, and voting ran for 6 hours on the campus of Iowa State University.
Voters came in from far and wide, some of the candidates organizing bus caravans to bring backers to the event. In the past the turnout has ranged from 14,000 to 23,000.
Free hamburgers and ice cream were provided and some candidates even paid the $30 entry fee for their supporters to vote in the Iowa Republican Straw Poll.
Sunday morning, it was the ultra-conservative Tea Party favourite Michele Bachmann who was doing the rounds of the talkshow studios on the big television networks, while the former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, a poor third, became the first hopeful to announce he was dropping out of the race.
For Michele Bachmann, who won 28% of votes cast, it was the latest success in a rapid rise from local politics to Republican frontrunner.
As the result emerged late on Saturday, Bachmann, standing on the steps of her campaign bus, shouted what has become her slogan, just as “hope and change” was for Obama.
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“You have just sent a message that Barack Obama will be a one … term … president.”
“I think what people see in me is I’m a real person, I’m authentic,” she said.
Michele Bachmann compared herself to Ronald Reagan, who is saw as one of the party’s giants by Republicans, in being guided by a core set of principles.
“I don’t compromise my core principles. That’s how you lead, you lead from principles.”
Bachmann’s weekend victory provides important momentum for her campaign and can expect an influx of financial support, but the bigger question for Republicans is whether her appeal can be broad enough to seduce enough voters in the November 2012 presidential election. Although there are eight declared candidates, realistically only three are still in the race: Michele Bachmann, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and the Texas Governor Rick Perry, who announced his candidacy on Saturday.
Although Michele Bachmann won the Iowa Straw Poll, her vote is soft, with many still undecided.
Sue Matejka, 65, reflects the fluidity of Iowa Republicans. She travelled the three hours from her home in Olin, Iowa, to Ames for the Straw Poll in a bus paid for by Tim Pawlenty but, despite accepting his largesse, had no qualms about voting for Michele Bachmann.
“I am undecided,” she said. For her, the overriding imperative is a candidate who will unseat Barack Obama.
“It is between Bachmann and Perry. I haven’t heard enough about Perry. What is on paper looks good. What he has done for Texans is good,” she added.
Michele Bachmann has risen fast since being elected to Congress in 2006. She has made the most of frequent appearances on television, particularly Fox News, where she is a favourite because of her ultra-conservative views.
She is one of the most high-profile figures, along with Sarah Palin, in the Tea Party movement. In line with Tea Party principles, she adopted a hardline position during the debt crisis, saying she would not vote for raising the national debt ceiling and on Sunday repeated her view that deep cuts in federal spending were vital.
But it is her views on social issues that helped secure her win in Iowa, one of the most socially conservative states in the country outside of the south. Before joining Congress, she prayed outside abortion clinics.
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Michele Bachmann is also one of the most outspoken critics of homosexuality, co-owning with her husband, Marcus, a clinic in Minnesota where, according to an ABC report by an undercover team, counsellors encourage gay people to pray to get rid of homosexual urges.
“It’s a very sad life. It’s part of Satan, I think, to say this is gay. It’s anything but gay,” she said in a speech in 2004.
While such views on social issues go down well in Iowa, Republicans know such statements will alienate many of the independent voters who decide elections nationwide.
Bachmann’s biggest problem is the entry into the race of Texas Governor Rick Perry, who is a strong candidate. While Perry holds many of the same views as Bachmann on social issues, he said that while he is opposed to same-sex marriage in Texas, he thinks it is fine for New York, saying that is the prerogative of each state to decide. As governor of a state with the best record of job growth in the country, Rick Perry is better placed than Michele Bachmann to take on Barak Obama on the economy. Michele Bachmann acknowledged she cannot win on social issues alone and shifted the emphasis in her round of television interviews on Sunday to the economy.
“It will be an economics election.”
Rick Perry, who announced his candidacy earlier Saturday, came in 6th place with 3.6% of the vote, ahead of GOP front-runner Mitt Romney, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia and former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, all of whom didn’t compete in the contest.
The poll results are nonbinding, amount to a popularity contest and offer candidates a chance to test their get-out-the-vote organizations.
Michele Bachmann’s victory may provide a road map for the Iowa campaign heading into the caucuses that are just four months away. But the straw poll has a mixed record of predicting the winner of that contest.
In 2008, Romney won the straw poll, but the big news was the surprising second-place showing of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses, but dropped from the race soon after. McCain, who eventually won the nomination, didn’t compete in the straw poll and finished in 10th place.
Meanwhile, Barak Obama, dropping in the polls and aware of the boost Republicans received from four days of campaign events in Iowa that attracted 700 journalists, heads off on Monday on a three days bus tour of the mid-west, including Iowa. A CNN poll last week put Obama on 47%, down from 52% in January. The White House election is 16 months away but he has a lot of ground to make up.
Republican Rick Perry will make the formal announcement on Saturday in Charleston, South Carolina.[googlead tip=”patrat_mic” aliniat=”dreapta”]
The Republican Rick Perry will officially announce his candidacy on Saturday, August 13, said Washington Times after information was provided exclusively by Carl Cameron from Fox News, known as having a hostile position to the current president, Barack Obama.
He will make his announcement in Charleston, South Carolina, where he is scheduled to speak at an annual conference of conservative bloggers.
Republican Texas Governor, Rick Perry is running for the US presidential race.
Rick Perry will then travel to New Hampshire and on to Iowa Sunday — hitting 3 of the first 4 states to hold nominating contests next year.
Rick Perry makes his entrance about six months before the Iowa caucuses, the traditional kickoff of the nominating season (the first major electoral event of the nominating process for President of the United States). Iowa is scheduled to be followed by New Hampshire’s primary, Nevada’s caucuses and South Carolina’s primary, though several other states are considering moves to jump ahead in the line.
The rest of the field has been assembled in Iowa for Thursday night’s nationally televised debate, Saturday’s Ames Straw Poll, the Iowa State Fair, which runs for 11 days and is a traditional hot spot for meeting voters and mugging for cameras.
[googlead tip=”vertical_mic”] Rick Perry’s presidential nomination is expected to fundamentally reshape the race and divert attention from other contenders, many of whom will be competing this weekend in the Iowa Straw Poll.
Being now in his 11th year as Texas governor, Rick Perry could fill the void some party activists see and could unify social and economic conservatives in the “Grand Old Party” (GOP a traditional nickname for the Republican Party)
“This is about electing a true conservative leader with a real record of job creation as our next president,” said Scott Rials, executive director of “Make Us Great Again”, one of the several pro-Perry political action committees that have formed to raise and spend money independently of Rick Perry’s campaign.
“Governor Rick Perry is our best qualified candidate to win back the White House and get our economy back on track.”
“Contrary to written reports that Governor Perry would use his Charleston speech on Saturday to announce his intention to run, he will tell the influential red state gathering … that he has entered the contest,” Rick Perry’s campaign strategist, David Carney told The Washington Times on Thursday.
In a preview of the Perry campaign’s emphasis, David Carney hailed the three-term governor as someone “known by many as America’s jobs governor.”
Carney, who was chief strategist for Rick Perry last year when he defeated Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison in Texas’ gubernatorial primary, said the Perry record stands “in perfect contrast to the current occupant of the White House, whose administration has appeared to be flailing around, trying to deal with economic woes for months.”
The GOP’s move also adds another target for President Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee, which had invested time in trying to discredit former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, whose polls show he is the front-runner in the field.
Conservatives were pleased with Rick Perry’s pending announcement.
“I think Governor Perry entering the race will solidify conservatives,” Dr. Randy Brinson, an Alabama gastroenterologist and founder of Rock the Vote, told The Washington Times.
“Romney will hope for a perilous split due to the large number of social conservatives in the race but history shows it will not occur as Romney strategists think.”
“Perry travels to Alabama and the key state of South Carolina to line up solid support over the weekend,” said Dr. Brinson, who is considered a major force in conservative politics in the South.
“Obvious strategy is to anchor South Carolina which is the make-or-break state for all Republican presidential contenders.”
Kirsten Gray, Texas Democratic Party spokeswoman, who disputed Rick Perry’s activity claims by saying he fought for a budget that would lay off thousands of state workers, said:
“Not surprising Rick Perry is making his announcement in South Carolina instead of Texas — there’s nowhere in the Lone Star State he could announce without an angry mob showing up.”
[googlead tip=”lista_medie” aliniat=”stanga”]According to the RealClearPolitics.com average of polls, Mitt Romney leads Rick Perry 20.4% to 15.4%. Former Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin, who has not announced a candidacy, places third, in a near-tie with Republican Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, an announced candidate who polls fourth.
Rick Perry did not seek space at the straw poll, though his announcement Saturday could fuel a write-in campaign there.
On Thursday, Mitt Romney was heckled by liberal activists as he delivered a soapbox speech at the Iowa fair.
"I’m not going to raise taxes. That’s my answer. If you want someone to raise taxes, you can vote for Barack Obama," said Mitt Romney to the liberal hecklers at Iowa fair.
“You ready for my answer? I’m not going to raise taxes. That’s my answer. If you want someone to raise taxes, you can vote for Barack Obama,“
Mitt Romney told the hecklers.
Rick Perry’s entry makes him the first sitting governor in the race, the field having a handful of former governors.
Winning the presidency by Perry would mean for Republicans to return to the power after the defeat of George W. Bush in 2008.
Last May, Washington Times wrote that Governor Rick Perry is capable to attract not only among Republican voters, but also from conservatives, independents and even Obama’s Democrats.
The first sign that he could run for US presidency was in June 2011, when he was invited to a Fox News show and said:
“I am thinking seriously about it.”
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Rick Perry is the Texas Governor since 2000, when he ascended from the lieutenant governorship after George W. Bush won the White House.
