Harold Meyerson in the Post: Guess who's the two-nation party now?

As the Republican convention goes into its final evening, the GOP has resurrected every culture war-whoop, every booboisie resentment, every Nixonian snarl against the educated elites, the city dwellers, the liberal media and the Hollywood dilettantes that has been the party’s meat ever since the Vietnam War (or, even before then, since Joe McCarthy). This year’s Democrats, by contrast, are trying to draw economic distinctions between the parties, but no one can plausibly argue that they are demonizing the rich as Republicans are demonizing the liberals. (For one thing, there are too many rich Democrats, and virtually no liberal Republicans.)

Republicans like to think they are still the heirs of Ronald Reagan, but the tone of their convention has been more Nixonian than Reaganesque. Nixon’s genius was always his ability to excite working- and middle-class rage against liberal cultural elites, and this remains the default Republican uber-theme to this day. We hadn’t heard that much of it before the convention, but Sarah Palin proved herself a master of maternalized Nixonism in her speech last night.

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Posted by Laura at September 4, 2008 11:04 PM