New Rule: Barack Obama is NOT an elitist! He's just really really smart

Modern conservatism began as a movement of dissident intellectuals...But over the past few decades, the Republican Party has driven away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts. This expulsion has had many causes. But the big one is this: Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare. Democrats kept nominating coastal pointy-heads like Michael Dukakis so Republicans attacked coastal pointy-heads.

Over the past 15 years, the same argument has been heard from a thousand politicians and a hundred television and talk-radio jocks. The nation is divided between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts.

What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole. The liberals had coastal condescension, so the conservatives developed their own anti-elitism, with mirror-image categories and mirror-image resentments, but with the same corrosive effect.

Republicans developed their own leadership style. If Democratic leaders prized deliberation and self-examination, then Republicans would govern from the gut.

George W. Bush restrained some of the populist excesses of his party — the anti-immigration fervor, the isolationism — but stylistically he fit right in. As Fred Barnes wrote in his book, Rebel-in-Chief, Bush reflects the political views and cultural tastes of the vast majority of Americans who dont live along the East or West Coast. Hes not a sophisticate and doesnt spend his discretionary time with sophisticates. As First Lady Laura Bush once said, she and the president didnt come to Washington to make new friends. And they havent.

The political effects of this trend have been obvious. Republicans have alienated the highly educated regions — Silicon Valley, northern Virginia, the suburbs outside of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Raleigh-Durham. The West Coast and the Northeast are mostly gone.

The Republicans have alienated whole professions. Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4-to-1 rates. With doctors, its 2-to-1. With tech executives, its 5-to-1. With investment bankers, its 2-to-1. It took talent for Republicans to lose the banking community.

Conservatives are as rare in elite universities and the mainstream media as they were 30 years ago. The smartest young Americans are now educated in an overwhelmingly liberal environment.

This year could have changed things. The G.O.P. had three urbane presidential candidates. But the class-warfare clichés took control. Rudy Giuliani disdained cosmopolitans at the Republican convention. Mitt Romney gave a speech attacking eastern elites. (Mitt Romney!) John McCain picked Sarah Palin.

Palin is smart, politically skilled, courageous and likable. Her convention and debate performances were impressive. But no American politician plays the class-warfare card as constantly as Palin. Nobody so relentlessly divides the world between the normal Joe Sixpack American and the coastal elite.

She is another step in the Republican change of personality. Once conservatives admired Churchill and Lincoln above all — men from wildly different backgrounds who prepared for leadership through constant reading, historical understanding and sophisticated thinking. Now those attributes bow down before the common touch.

And so, politically, the G.O.P. is squeezed at both ends. The party is losing the working class by sins of omission — because it has not developed policies to address economic anxiety. It has lost the educated class by sins of commission — by telling members of that class to go away.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/opinion/10brooks.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&...

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Karl
• rove
• Barack
• Obama
• Sarah
• Palin
• lie
• john
• Mccain
• Joe
• Biden
• economy
• speech
• interview
• debate
• energy
• oil
• gas
• tax
• Iraq
• war
• president
• real
• time
• bill
• Maher
• new
• rules
• countdown
• with
• Keith
• olbermann
• Christian
• Finnegan

[Drwhodunnit1973]

It shouldn't bother people even if Obama WERE an elitist. Frankly, the world NEEDS the smartest, sharpest, most intellectually lively people it can get occupying key positions of power.

What, people "think" America would be better off with a materialistic, in-bred halfwit in the White House? You guys tried that last time, look what happened.

[Prka01]

The 29 dislikes must be Sarah Palin's children.

[cocoinfinity1]

Why is he overpaid. Clinton has no dignity.

[MrStanley1109]

I want Bill Clinton Back! So what he got a Blow Job in the white house.

[RJWooller]

He is smart. I like him.

[luv4knowledge]

@unfortunatebeam And since Sarah Palin turned out to be too much of an intellectual for tea baggers they turned to Michelle Bachman, LOL....yeah they're a looney bunch and the dangerous part isn't that they're not smart but that they have a devout base willing to throw them all their money!

[williamwagener]

@toverkleet Really? go read Judy Woods book, then we will talk, NO conspiracy.  SCIENCE FACT.

[toverkleet]

@williamwagener Dont be such a conspiracy theorist. Scientists have proven HOW the explosions happend in the Twin Towers. It was the chemical reaction of liquid aluminimum with water. The explosion that such a mixture gives, can with both chemicals at a mass of 20 kilo's level a laboratory with a huge crater in it.

[williamwagener]

@toverkleet YOU have NOT heard Ron PAUL. Go listen to HIM, not what nut cases like gutless Maher here and his ilk have to say. Remember, Maher, REFUSES to believe on TV , Publicallly, where it counts,

that Islamics had NOTHING to do with the demolition job doneon WTC and Pentagon on 911. See

Dr. Judy Wood.com and read her science book on 911. Listen to Ronn PAUL, not what OTHERS say he

said.

[darkwarriorkane]

@johnnycmajor On 19 March 2011 a multi-state coalition began a military intervention in Libya to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution, I was wrong on it being Nato sorry about that. I was also wrong the congress never declared war on Al Queda however I'm still willing to let that one go of course the fact that he was a few miles from my home town when he was apparently preaching his hate that lead to the fort hood attack may taint my opinion lol

[toverkleet]

I agree with you @AntiConformist911 Conservatism in the past was just something you could disagree with on what road to take, not what track has been layed before. Facts were the core stone of conservatives as well. This way your Republicans are acting is not conservatism, but rather idiocracy (aka the political aim of idiots).

[toverkleet]

@williamwagener Ron Paul might be born in America, but is not the shining example for your country. I agree with him on Iraq and Afghanistan, but he is a destructive force for your inner workings. Privatization of even more stuff is bullshit. Letting people only marry in churches is quiet offensive to those that are not Christian, heck, even believers.