Salon: "The Search for an Intellectual GOP Presidential Candidate"

[BlueSwan]

Good article. And I agree that Daniels is the best candidate for the "thinking Republican".

While European and American politics aren't directly comparable (for instance, Europe was dominated by social democratic parties throughout the 20th century, while the social democraztic movement never gained any momentum in the US), I want to draw one parallel to danish politics.

Throughout the 20th century it was pretty common that the economic upper- and middle class voted for the center-right parties while the working class and a majority of the academic elite voted for the socialist parties. In other words: classic classvoting.

Over the last two decades this pattern has changed. Social issues like views on immigrants, law and order and the environment has taken total precedence over the old economic issues. This has changed the previous classvoting. The working class in Denmark no longer vote primarily socialist, because the working class is generally very social conservative. In a danish context that primarily means that they're anti-immigrant, anti-EU, want toughness on crime and discipline in schools. This is something that the rightwing parties have been touting and hence more working class people vote for rightwing parties than leftwing.

But at the same time the right has lost loads of their better edcucated voters (what you might call the cultural upper and middle class according to Bourdieu) who tend to be socially liberal (but often fiscal conservatives). Increasingly the dividing lines in danish politics are determined by education rather than class.

With the likes of Palin, Limbaugh and Beck setting the tone for republicans these years, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this educational dividing line replicated in the US in the near future.

Please excuse the poor english, I'm dead tired and english isn't my first language. :-)