The threshold for Republican wonkery is whatever National Review or Fox News decide it to be. They make their own reality.

Unfortunately, the president has inexplicably allowed these golden economic opportunities to languish by not submitting the deals to Congress for up-or-down votes.

Besides that isn't this just plain backwards? I thought Congress could do this on their own, and give themselves an up-or-down vote. Although notice how up-or-down votes matter when it's their own priorities...

Consider a Republican congressman. Then consider an idiot. Ah, but I repeat myself.
-- Mark Twain, 1872
(slightly modified)

Very likely these gems come from ALEC or a sister organization.

Meh, consider the source. Rubin is a hack, so of course she elevates hackery to wonkery.

Look, this is the party that considers Newt Gingrich a great thinker with academic credentials because he once taught a history course or two. Their threshold for intellectual achievement can't go any lower than they set it over a decade ago.

I had thought the right still studied at the altar of Siegfried Engelmann and Elaine C Bruner for their seminal political and very wonkish book "Reading Mastery II:Storybook I".

Shrub, especially, enjoyed the chapter entitled, "My Pet Goat".

There's a fine line between "wonks" and "wankes" ;-0
BTW, FYI about Huckabee if you didn't know. URL is self-explanatory:
http://www.pensitoreview.com/2011/03/04/huckabee-and-the-boy-scouts-his-son-was-fired-as-a-scout-counselor-for-torturing-a-dog-to-death/

I meant, there's a fine line between "wonks" and "wanks."

By writing his column and highlighting the importance of trade with South America, isn't Rubio undercutting the fake "Rio vacation" talking point? I eagerly await Rubio's spirited defense of the President's trip to South America.

In spite of the Republican party's attempts to disparage "intellectuals" many people still give weight to "wonks". So the the Republicans also claim to have wonks. Just in their case that means people that can sound intelligent while supporting the party platform. Actually expertise doesn't enter into it.

I mean no disrespect. But aside from David Frum, who would you consider a "conservative wonk?"

Perhaps there are a few libertarian economists and law professors who fit the bill. But for the most part I found conservative columnists and commentators really unwonky.

"Colombia, Panama, and South Korea "

She isn't trying to imply that "South Korea" is a part of "South America", is she?

Given that a majority of Republicans still look favorably on Palin, who is willfully incapable of stringing a coherent series of sentences together, I would imagine the bar for "wonkery" in conservative circles is just being able to sound smarter than she does.

aside from David Frum, who would you consider a "conservative wonk?"

Nobody. At this point, 'conservative wonk' is an oxymoron, given the chasm between positions widely held by conservatives on the one hand, and facts and reason on the other.

One can be a conservative hack posing as a wonk, but to actually be a wonk is to expel oneself from the conservative movement, as Frum has effectively done.

In GOP-world, wonkdom consists merely in mastering the idiom of the sect. It's futile to criticize them for their lack of knowledge. That's the whole point. It all comes back to their idea of the "reality based community" of which they do not wish to be part. What matters to them is soundness of attitude and membership of the in-crowd. There was something similar in pre-WWI Germany, where it was called "Gesinnung." Look where that led.

Republican wonks? Not so much.

Republican wankers. Quite a few!

Richard Lugar is a conservative foreign policy wonk.

After that, uh, ...

Wonkery is incompatible with right-wingery because wonkery implies empiricism, modeling, examining consequences. Wonks can be wrong, in which case they'll look for errors in their data or methods. Right-wingery can never be wrong about anything.

"Right-wing wonk" is as oxymoronic as "empirical zealot".

I think for a Republican to be considered a wonk they just have to wear glasses.

"We seem to have reached the point at which Republican officials who can speak in complete sentences, and seem as if they might have read a book at some point, are held up as specialized experts, worthy of admiration."

That's because Dems and the MSM haven't exposed these idiots for what they are. Why haven't Dems directly challenged the likes of Ryan, Cantor and Rubio?

Throw the fucking gauntlet down for once.

Or wear bow ties.

davidp, gesinnung depended upon one's definition of how far the word neighbor extended when, used in the religious sense of loving thy neighbor and useage of law by government. Jewish Germans believed in gesinnung, also, however, they never realized the law would be used against them until it was too late.

it now appears that anyone who knows how to cut and paste is considered "a conservative wonk."

nevermind that american job creation from various free trade agreements has been pretty underwhelming

OK, we sort between wingery, wonkery, and wankery!

I'm not familiar with the details of the trade deals with South American countries, but one thing jumps out from Rubio's statement that they should be brought to Congress for an up-or-down vote to keep them from "languishing".

The clear implication is that he would like them to be voted on so they would take effect and be implemented. But what would happen if Obama submitted them to Congress for a vote? The Republicans in the House would all vote against them, and the Republicans in the Senate would filibuster. Because even if they think a trade deal would be a good thing, they can't allow Obama to have a success at anything. And you know the really sad part of that? I'd bet $100 that Rubio himself would vote against the deals. And then the next he'd put out an op-ed criticizing Obama for not getting the deals approved.

wonk = understand, speak cogently to the issues (D)
wonk = not frothing, speaking in tongues, or certifiably insane (R)

But when talking about Congress, if every GOP lawmaker who can read and write is awarded the wonk label, the threshold has been set too low.

Oh, I don't know. Considering the most recent Republican President, maybe that threshold has been set too high. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to work putting food on my family.

Unfortunately, it isn't just that the Republicans are without deep knowledge in specialized fields. It isn't even just that they are delusional.

But they are failing to confirm deeply knowledgeable and highly qualified wonks for government positions, as Krugman pointed out recently.

It is one thing to be an idiot. Whatever! But it makes me angry when idiocrity prevents the rest of us from having competent leaders.

No, no, all wrong! I'm pretty sure wonk is an acronym for "well, one never knows."

But coming to my senses, I see that my seriously outdated 1986 dictionary has no entry for wonk, but lists wonky as a Briticism meaning 1. unsteady, shaky; or 2. awry, wrong. First citation: 1925

So wonk may be a back-formation with semantic inversion, whatever that means. Or not.

By the Palin yardstick, Rubio is a genius...