I’m not saying you have to like Ron DeSantis. I’m not saying he’s always going to make the right decision. You may well disagree with a whole lot of DeSantis’ decisions. But I do think a guy with Yale undergrad and Harvard Law School and service as a legal advisor to a SEAL team in Iraq and a successful stint as a federal prosecutor and what he’s done as a congressman and as a governor and having run a reelection bid that won a landslide in a previously evenly-split state… I think if you add all of that up, you find a guy who is probably not dumb. I’m not saying all of these past experiences are surefire, 100 percent indicators of a lot of brain cells at work. Maybe you’ve met some people who went to Harvard, who you wouldn’t trust to cross the street by themselves. But if a person is successful in one chapter of life after another, they’ve probably got something going on upstairs.

“Not dumb” does not necessarily smarter than you; maybe you’re really smart! But in some people’s minds, conceding that DeSantis is not dumb would bring their entire political worldview crashing down. All Republicans must be dumb, just as they must always be insane, and always be greedy and selfish, and so on.