I appreciate that Ross Douthat is looking for a working-class hero for the future GOP of his book, Grand New Party. The sooner he can bring himself from barking up Palin's tree, though, the better off he's going to be. But for the moment, he's running with it:
In a recent Pew poll, 44 percent of Americans regarded Palin unfavorably. But slightly more had a favorable impression of her. That number included 46 percent of independents, and 48 percent of Americans without a college education.
That last statistic is a crucial one. Palin's popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal -- that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal -- that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.
I guess thanks to Sarah Palin, my Masters degree in theatre from Virginia Commonwealth University finally means something!
Anyway, as it turns out, Palin is part of the ivory-tower degreed elite, herself, and educational attainment doesn't really sync up with Palin support.
Thomas Ricks Reaches Strategic Accord With Jay-Z: Foreign Policy's Thomas Ricks is the official game-changer in the death of Auto-Tune debate, very specifically casting Kanye and T-Pain as dead-enders. I think he could peel off Lil Wayne, but are we really ready for that? Regardless, I think the entire foreign policy community is waiting with bated breath to see what champagne Ricks endorses.
The Shadow Editors take on WaPo Salons: You'll enjoy Choire Sicha and Tom Scocca's discussion of the recent Washington Post "cash-for-ass" Salons, canceled despite the fact that Katherine Weymouth had cooked up a mess of crab and artichoke dip. I think we can all agree that as soon as Craig Newmark figures out a way to attach twenty-dollar bills to emails, journalism as we know it will be saved. Paging Chris Lehmann: aren't these Salons a "rich people thing?" Love, your assignment editor!
"David Broder Isn't Laughing": Or so I'm told. I must confess to you: I have something of a studied disinterest in David Broder's emotional state. Anyway, something about how Broder has a sad about how Al Franken won't be contributing to the manufacture of Bipartisanship Marm that Broder ingests like a small, unsupervised child devours paste.