Maybe because Conservatives often precede the word "intellectual" with "liberal".
And follow it with the "elite". It doesn't take PhD to know when you're being put in the frame.
And now that the GOP has turned populist, with folks like Palin, Joe Sixpack, and Da Plumber as their avatars, Bowser's rants have a resonance they failed to have even a few months ago. You have to admit, you guys haven't exactly gone out of your way to make friends since the Reagan days, and there is a lot of bad blood still out there.
It's going to be a long time before the Goldwaters and the Buckleys, or even the Buchanans start having an influence with the GOP or even the generic Right as a whole.