David Brooks argues that the US Republican Party's populist and anti-intellectual stance has alienated the highly educated regions of America such as the cities and coasts. The republican appeal is now to evangelical and rural sentiment. The problem for the Republican Party is that wealth flows from the cities and from the upper-middle class. It has got to the point where the Democrats receive more in individual funding from professionals. The data below is from Political Contributions; Democrats are in light purple.

Brooks writes:

The political effects of this trend have been obvious. Republicans have alienated the highly educated regions -- Silicon Valley, northern Virginia, the suburbs outside of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Raleigh-Durham. The West Coast and the Northeast are mostly gone.

The Republicans have alienated whole professions. Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4-to-1 rates. With doctors, it's 2-to-1. With tech executives, it's 5-to-1. With investment bankers, it's 2-to-1. It took talent for Republicans to lose the banking community.

This is my experience of the Republican Party. I consider them a myopic bunch of incompetent crooks that are unable to govern. In Australian politics I have fluently floated across party lines for my voting; from the Liberals, to Labor, to the Democrats and to the Greens when it warranted. This is because, despite the Liberals dabbling with modern conservatism, the Australian political parties are arguments within the framework of democratic liberalism. The US Republican Party has lost this modern basis of their philosophy.

The bottom-line is; governance counts.

I became way more interested in the Labor Party in Australia after the Children Overboard Affair which was bad governance personified. Bad governance is remembered and generally is punished by the electorate. This is why I consider the US Elections as going to be a Presidential and Congressional blood bath. Only 9% of Americans think America is on the right track. That hurts democratically.

We are seeing the end effects of bad governance all strike during the years that the Republican Party has been in power; war, economy, constitutional flagrance, poor policy, poor emergency responses (Katrina); you name it, the Republican Party is wearing it. I should also point out that I experienced bad Republican Party governance at the county level too. So it is not a national thing; it is endemic. The philosophies of the Republican Party and their democratic appeal has left them unable to govern.

I am probably in that group that the US Republican Party would call 'liberal intellectuals' and Brooks is right. They have lost me. Whereas I might be fluid in Australia with my voting, in the US my experiences have left me with no sympathy for the Republican Party. I doubt I am alone.