The discomfort Sarah Palin causes in liberals, and even many conservatives, stems from a fundamental disconnect between the educated elite and real America, Michael Novak writes in the National Review. Solid, humble citizens hear a familiar ring to Palin’s oft-mocked accent: “The same guts. The same common sense. The same instincts. The same sense of America.”
Elites “understand the maturity, sophistication, and rationalization of their own world better than the simpler but truer instincts of most of America,” and that’s not a good thing, Novak continues. The Obamas “diss America implicitly and explicitly,” and prefer a European model; Palin is “calling us back, to what’s best in our own American tradition.” (More Election 2008 stories.)