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.”

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Andrea adds: Downscale, upscale, whatever. I don’t think she’s courting the Lawrence Park vote.

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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.

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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?