I often think how times have changed.
Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, Republicans were painted as country club, refined, educated, business owners and out of touch with the “working man”.
Today, we on the right are crude, rednecks. Not as refined nor intellectually bright. Not the progressive thinkers as the Lear Jet liberals of today. In essence - just the opposite of the era in which I grew up.
Historically, the GOP was the elitist party and the democrats were the populist party.
That began to change in the 50s-60s when the Cultural Elitists left the GOP to take over the dem party, leaving the Economic Elitists in the GOP. The Cultural Elitists rode to power on the backs of the boomers and took control of the dem party at the 1968 dem convention in Chicago.
This led to a dis-satisfaction amongst the Cultural Populists in the dem party so the GOP used Nixon's Southern Strategy to bring the populist silent majority into the GOP.
So the modern republican party is a coalition between Economic Elitists and Cultural Populists while the modern democrat party is a coalition between Cultural Elitists and Economic Populists
These events were the greatest political shift in America since the Civil War and the problem is that both coalitions are slowly breaking down. For the dems, the boomers are aging and will soon exit the stage and for the GOP, the populist wave has swept the party leading to conflicts between the rightwing populists and the GOPe.
Bork defined these Cultural Elitists aka intellectual elitists aka Cultural Marxists as those who make their living off of words and language: Educators, Entertainers, Lawyers, Bureaucrats, etc
Economic Elitists are Wall Street, Main Street, Corporate America, Transnationals, etc
Economic Populists are unions and blue collar workers, environmentalists, welfare recipients, the entitled, etc
The Cultural Populists are southern culture, prairie culture, rural culture, gun culture, moral culture, etc