Washington Post columnist and former CNN host Kathleen Parker, who emerged on the national scene in 2008 as a critic of Sarah Palin, has a new column arguing that the Republican Party has become “Palinized.”  By that, Parker means that a “tide of know-nothingness…has become de rigueur among the anti-elite, anti-intellectual Republican base,” and, among the party’s presidential candidates, “the least informed earns the loudest applause.”

The latest example of this trend, Parker argues, is the ascendance of Herman Cain.  Under criticism for uninformed answers to questions on a variety of foreign-policy issues, Parker writes that Cain is “banking on the hope that GOP contempt for smarty-pants, gotcha journalists will outweigh concerns that he may be out of his league.”