David Frum writes:
But even based on what we know already, opinion about Palin’s life story will divide sharply. I wrote a column for The Week’s online edition suggesting how that opinion will divide. Briefly, the Palin choice will intensify GOP support among downscale white voters – while adding to the GOP’s difficulties among more educated white voters.
I have a university degree what has got three letters in it, yet I find myself enthusiastically cheering for Gov. Palin. I am also white. I would be surprised to hear I am the only person in this situation. Is there such a thing as more educated downscale white voters? As Mark Steyn says, ease up on the snobbery, dude. “You’d be surprised how crowded it is down at the ‘downscale’ end.”
____________________________
Andrea adds: Downscale, upscale, whatever. I don’t think she’s courting the Lawrence Park vote.
___________________________
Rebecca adds: That’s tone deaf, even for Frum. He’s written some great books, my favourite of which is How We Got Here, which takes some of the focus on the culture wars off the 1960s and takes a closer look at the importance of the 1970s. His latest, Comeback, was just … off, in many ways. From his position on life (he wants pro-lifers to stop worrying about abortion and pay more attention to embryo-destructive research, as if it were a zero-sum contest between them, and as if a culture that won’t protect a third trimester baby could be bothered to protect a zygote) to his inattention to the role of culture in creating and perpetuating poverty, the book struck me as somehow misguided, as if he had carefully taken aim at his subject and then sneezed as he loosed his arrow.
At the time, I thought that this was a function of his preoccupation with foreign policy in recent years. He’s done some important work in that field, so fair enough if he’s not as au courant with social policy as he used to be. Now, though, it looks as if perhaps he just doesn’t get small-c conservative America.
_______________________
Andrea adds: “pay more attention to embryo-destructive research”–is that what he wants? Because that redeems his other off positions at least a little for me. I firmly believe that it won’t be too long before women won’t choose abortion for themselves. I’m less hopeful about those scientists who have control over many more lives, doing research on embryonic children. A mother knows what her unborn child is, intuitively. Does a scientist?
by 
Wow. You hit the nail on the head for snobbery Brigitte! Our own household boasts a couple of PhD degrees, a government job and a “white family” living comfortably in a single family home in an idyllic community. Nothing affluent, mind you, but definitely not downscale. On the contrary, I would argue that we are bang-on for Frum’s description of what he calls “more educated white voters”. Yet my husband and I are cheering Palin on as our person-of-choice — if we had voting rights in the US.
Yup – I’m hoping this election shows Frum just how crowded it is on the downscale end of his spectrum.
I have a university degree too and I like Palin. Does that now make me one of those downscale white people that David Frum is writing about?
You know those axis of downscale people Frum is always talking about. He would really be surprised at how crowded that axis of downscale people really is.
“Axis of downscale”– love it.