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Ann Coulter, recently published If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans , and as is typical, she continues her vitriolic blather. A Republican site, using the General Social Survey, thought it had proven the idea that liberals were less intelligent, using the verbal test from the survey, and on average, this might be true. But then, the author looked further. The test is divided into three (3) score groups, high, medium and low, and the results showed that Democrats are dominant in the high and low scorers - this is similar to the dichotomy of voting preferences, where cities composed of the educated and poor are Democrat, and suburban/rural voters are Republican. Aside from party affiliation liberals dominate the high scores, while middle of the road and conservative voters dominate the other, lower-scoring groups. Among the intelligent, Republicans are usually the least represented. The group with the largest representation in the high verbal scorers are Independen...

Do hard-core Republicans seem more hostile to women, particularly smart, independent, liberal women, than Democrats? One writer on the Kathy Sierra incident noted that many, if not most, of the hostilities came from readers of a right-wing news blog; I believe it was Free Republic. My own sense is that conservative hostility isn't typically directed at women's abilities, but at women's anatomy, sexual orientation, or 'femininity'. Even then, it can be an attack on her for being too feminine, as with the jibes at the outed CIA agent, Valerie Plame, for CNN/CNBC for wearing pink. Anyone remember liberals attacking Laura Bush? Not that I know of, other than attacks at her for being married to the chimpanzee in power, or supporting it in public events. Although Hillary Clinton was lauded in the press, she is often the butt of conservative male attack.