The current incarnation of anti-intellectualism in Republican politics — epitomized by the campaign of former football star Herschel Walker for U.S. Senate in Georgia — started in earnest in the winter of 2012 with a quip from former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who was seeking the Republican presidential nomination. At a tea party campaign stop in Michigan, Santorum called President Barack Obama a "snob" for saying he wanted "everybody in America to go to college."
The truth is there's no evidence Obama ever said that, but that is irrelevant. Politicians misquote, mislead and sometimes flat-out lie about each other during campaign stops. What made Santorum's misrepresentation notable, though, is that he got a bump from his remarks despite the fact that he himself held a bachelor's and two graduate degrees.
It didn't take a private investigator to find this information out. It was available on his campaign website — not that his supporters cared. They chose to ignore the hypocrisy of his comments about college because of their dislike of Obama, their dislike of Democrats or, perhaps, simply because the facts didn't confirm what they thought they already knew.
