The Clockwork Chartophylax

For those of you unfamiliar with the esoterics of political science, the Crazification Factor is a theory put forward by noted political theorists Rogers and Tyrone (2005) to explain the 27% of the American population who still stubbornly approve of George W. Bush.

Here’s their formulation of the principle:

Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgment. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That’s crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.

A recent poll on American women’s reactions to Sarah Palin provides a further data point for this hypothesis:

The poll, carried out by random dialing of 800 women on Sunday and Monday, shows that 50 percent of women voters felt McCain picked Palin out of political expediency and not because he believes she has the experience to do the job.

Only 29 percent said he had picked her to run in the November 4 elections because he believed she was qualified to be vice president.

(Emphasis mine.) Now that’s crazy.

But it’s not just women (because to suggest that would be sexist – under the new GOP definition of the term). A Rasmussen poll of both men and women found that 29% of Americans think Palin is ready to be President.

That being said – Stephen Colbert makes a good case for the fact that Palin is actually more qualified to be president than McCain:

That, my friends, is change you can believe in.

Posted on September 4th, 2008 under america, humour, politics • Tags: 27%, america, bush, crazification factor, election 2008, john rogers, mccain, politics, poll, sarah palin, stephen colbert. • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback