Die Elitist Scum....

Here is today's volley in the "Liberals are Elitists" scuffle:

"Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."
-- Karl Rove on Sen. Barak Obama

You know I just don't get it. The guy was raised by his grandparents. He was a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, then he represented the South Side as a State Representative. No fat cat corporate jobs. No country club. His wife works at a hospital. He raises two kids and goes to church.

It is somewhat ironic that a political party that has made its bones catering to the needs of America's upper class, whose movers, shakers and major donors come from the upper reaches of corporate America, whose policy platforms are full of moral sideswipes, and whose current presidential candidate has nine homes, can look at anybody and call them an elitist. When something is so obviously contradictory, yet is repeated over and over again, there is something more there.

UPDATE

Thinking more about the "something more here."

Conservatives and Progressives both concern themselves with elites. Progressives worry about a discrete and easily defined economic elite. That is the small (and getting smaller) group of people who control vast amounts of wealth and are willing to dedicate a good portion of it to influencing the public agenda in their favor, gaining control of resources, and protecting their wealth from claims made on behalf of the common good. They are dangerously willing to prove the truth of the adage that "might makes right." If you asked a Progressive to describe the Economic Elite, they would use words like "selfish" and "thuggish."

Conservatives on the other hand spend little time worried about economic elites. As demonstrated above, the elite they worry about is much more amorphous. At various times it involves the well educated, the culturally bohemian, and folks with influence in the media and arts. To conservatives the elite is also secular, comparatively pacifist and populist. As the Rove quote above demonstrates -- and he is certainly not the only example -- conservatives tend to feel that there is this vast other who looks down upon them and snipes about them. For conservatives their elite is particulalrly pernicious because they are "utopian," "don't understand how the world works" or don't understand the magnitude of threats we face. If you asked conservatives to define the elite they disdain, they would use words like "condescending" "unpatriotic," and "politically correct."

What stands out is that the Economic Elite that Progressives fear is easily identifiable and they certainly don't make their desires a secret. The Amorphous Elite that conservatives fear seems to include anybody and everybody. From The Sulzberg family to NASA scientists. From union activists to feminists. From college professors to CNN. From Bill Clinton to Barak Obama. From homosexuals to college faculty. From Atheists to activist clergy.

When the elite you rail against is that big, maybe it is not an elite. Maybe it is just everybody.