We're back in Kansas folks

This Harold Myerson post at Tapped

Speaking in Denver's Invesco Field a couple of hours before Barack Obama took the stage, Russia scholar and Ike-granddaughter Susan Eisenhower endorsed Obama and (as Obama himself did later that night) questioned John McCain's temperament.

No sooner had fellow Prospector Dana Goldstein and I arrived at the Minneapolis Convention Center, site of the Republican National Convention, yesterday that we encountered Susan's brother David, who, of course, is not only Ike's grandson (after whom Ike named the presidential retreat in Maryland's mountains) but also Richard Nixon's son-in-law. David Eisenhower is attending the convention as part of a group from the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania.

Reminds me that as well as being a Nixonland like appeal to lower class ressentiment the Palin pick is a classic move straight out of Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas. Can't wait to see his take on it but as I recall the book there are chapters on the rise of the know nothing, angry, disaffected, working and middle class losers of the Kansan social world to the surprise and shock of their former "betters" the upper middle class and the superrich. One of his examples is of a top Republican mover and shaker discovering that his own secretary, as in "take a letter Miss Palin" secretary runs for public office and wins against a candidate he is backing.