Null Set Blogging, Part 2

Oh, lordy. Mark Kleiman catches the Note making Mitt Romney out to be some kind of super-nerd who's possibly too smart for the presidency thanks to his deployment of the term "null set." Apparently, it hasn't dawned on them that Romney was misusing the term.

Comments

Can we just go ahead and label the entire Republican field the Null Set? Kleiman's example of the term's proper usage is a good guide:

For example, if dishonesty is a necessary condition of becoming a Republican Presidential candidate, then the set of honest Republican Presidential candidates will be the null set.

Posted by jhupp | June 7, 2007 9:14 AM

The funny thing about this gaffe is that it doesn't work on any level: to people who know what a null set is, Romney sounds like an idiot; to people who don't, he sounds like a pointy-headed geek. It's a two-fer!

Now, there are certain people who might think, "Romney said a word I don't understand, therefore he's very intelligent, therefore my opinion of him has marginally increased." In my experience, these people do not tend to be Republican voters.

Posted by Chris Conway | June 7, 2007 9:19 AM

Now, there are certain people who might think, "Romney said a word I don't understand, therefore he's very intelligent, therefore my opinion of him has marginally increased." In my experience, these people do not tend to be Republican voters.

I think Ezra said something along these lines in the past week, maybe even about Romney's content-free nattering. I disagree on your last point, though; it seems entirely possible that not-rabid Republicans, or at least Republican-leaning swing voters, would respond very well to this sort of thing. Remember that there's an entire cottage industry of GOP 'intellectuals' paid to legitimize bad ideas, even though they have almost no use for empiricism and exist to rationalize predetermined conclusions.

Posted by latts | June 7, 2007 9:40 AM

Now I'm confused. Romney is dumb enough to be president?

And by "non-sequitor" does he mean "non-starter?"

Posted by Tom | June 7, 2007 9:53 AM

I think, in Romney's usage, "non sequitur" means "something which does not make sense to me, in all my erudition."

Posted by Chris Conway | June 7, 2007 10:05 AM

The null set is the set of all current Republican presidential candidates possessing the ability to fully comprehend what the null set is.

Posted by pedro | June 7, 2007 10:19 AM