OBSERVATION: McCain/Palin capture middle America

The elite liberal establishment disparagingly refers to it as “fly over America” – that portion of our nation that exits between Martha’s Vineyard on the east and Tinsel Town on the west. Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferrraro once snobbishly posed the rhetorical question, “What is this country without the east and west coasts?” For most of us, the answer is simple -- America.

The political value of this meat and potatoes region is reflected in John McCain’s naming Sarah Palin as his running mate. She exudes middle America values, and connects with the heartland constituency like no one since Ronald Reagan.

Granted, Bill Clinton has a bit of the common touch. However, he would never have been elected President had the GOP put up a populist candidate. George Bush and Bob Dole were the consumate elite D.C. insiders. Whenever an elitist is up against a populist in the quadrennial presidential election, it is the populist who usually wins.

Both sides know this, and that is why the Barack Obama people are trying to hard to avoid having the “elitist” tail pinned on his Democrat ass. (<-- Maybe I should have said "donkey.") Which means, all that effort to make Obama look more presidential, more intelligent, more sophisticated, more cosmopolitan may have been misspent. The efforts to compare him to the quintessential elitest, John Kennedy, is turning out to be a huge miscalculation.

The addition of Palin creates a crisis for Obama. No doubt about it. He and his advisors are back to drawing board, and maybe the dart board, to come up with a new game plan. The fact that they know the problem is reflected in Obama’s almost conciliatory response to the Palin pick. He knows attacking a woman is never good, and he has had the advantage of 18 primary elections to learn, as the song lyrics go, “how to handle a woman.”

Should McCain get a lock on middle America -- and it appears he is now making significant advances toward that objective – a portion of the credit will have to go to his upset-the-applecart selection of Palin. However, most credit goes to the Obama supporters.

Obama’s problem, and McCain’s windfall benefit has been the ham-handed and mean-spirited hysteria emanating from the hard core liberal establishment. While the viciousness of the left wing attack infuriated the fair-minded, the greater effrontery was the mocking of almost everything that represents the culture of middle America – religion, recreation, speech patterns and accents, entertainment, dress, sex, and home life.

In their zeal to capsize the newly launched candidacy, they published and promoted an array of personal, political and professional accusations – and many false accusations, as it turns out. They failed to appreciate that Palin instantaneously became personification of middle America, and an attack on her is an attack on them. This hysterical overreaction is driving voters to McCain.

There are still two more months for this campaign to pitch and yaw. As of today, however, fly over America is McCain land. The Palin selection maybe looked back upon as the beginning of the momentum that carries McCain/Palin to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.