In the Bush era, Republicans demonstrated their collective poor judgment by twice electing as president a bellicose, proudly incurious, anti-intellectual ideologue. A poll out yesterday suggests that they learned nothing from that disaster, and are ready to do it again.

Less than a week after Sarah Palin — who has all of George Bush’s intellectual deficiencies and then some — announced she is walking away from her job as governor of Alaska midway through her first term, USA Today found that 71 percent of Republicans would vote for her for president in 2012:

When it comes to a potential presidential run, the USA TODAY Poll displays Palin’s strength in the Republican base and weakness among swing voters, who traditionally decide national elections. Republicans by 71 percent-27 percent say they’d be likely to vote for her if she ran for president in 2012, while independents by 51 percent-44 percent would not.

As Todd Purdum put it in his profile of Palin in the August issue of Vanity Fair, “What does it say about the nature of modern American politics that a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded?”

The question ought to be, what does it say that two such proud underachievers are applauded so roundly by the same party in the same decade.