Republicans still think they're the 'party of ideas.' That's laughable in the age of Trump.

Rank-and-file GOP voters have no use for what "pointy headed" intellectuals — on the left or right — have to say. Experts and elites be damned!

The thought is laughable.
(Image credit: Gary Waters / Alamy Stock Photo)

In the run-up to the U.K. vote to leave the European Union, pro-Brexit politician Michael Gove said "people in this country have had enough of experts." In other words, voters would be right to ignore all the economists and business executives warning that Brexit would do serious long-term harm to the British economy. And so they did.

Surely, many Republicans are taking the same dismissive attitude to a letter released this week from a group of nearly 400 economists, including eight Nobel laureates. These experts called Donald Trump a "dangerous, destructive choice" for president and chastised him for promoting "magical thinking and conspiracy theories over sober assessments of feasible economic policy options."

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James Pethokoukis

James Pethokoukis is the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he runs the AEIdeas blog. He has also written for The New York Times, National Review, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and other places.