Sarah Palin and the urban backlash

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has some political assets, and some political liabilities.

For a small but important slice of American voters — say 25-30% — her assets seem huge. She’s folksy, authentic, a member of their own tribe.

In my book a couple of years ago, I called her small-town base “the Homeland.” Pundits these days are simply calling it “Palinland.”

But polls suggest that a growing number of Americans, more than half already, are more concerned with her political liabilities.

Palin lacks experience and occasionally seems incapable of answering fairly straightforward questions. (What newspapers do you read? What Supreme Court rulings haven’t you liked?)

But a small slice of the electorate (maybe 20-25%, I’m guessing here) also seems distinctly put-off by Palin’s “rural” affect.

Her Fargo-style accent, her “you betchas” and her winks. It seems that what sells in Peoria doesn’t have the same appeal inside the urban beltway.

“If you, out of nowhere, are going to grab a woman out of the woods and make her your vice presidential candidate,” opined Daily Show host Jon Stewart, “what can I do?”

Sarah Palin is like Jodie Foster in the movie ‘Nell.’ They just found her, and she was speaking her own special language.

Ouch. The fact is that Palin talks a lot like a couple of people in my own family.

But Stewart’s not alone.

New York Times columnist David Brooks, as urban a conservative as you can find, lamented what he describes as Palin’s anti-intellectualism, long a code for bumpkinism.

Sarah Palin represents a fatal cancer on the Republican Party…there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I’m afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices.

The contrast between Palin’s world of Joe Sixpacks and America’s urban voters feels razor sharp this election cycle — in part because urbanites are angry.

To them, she looks like the outsider, the book-burner, the homophobe, the bumpkin.

But it’s also true that Palin herself is contributing to the divide.

Her stump speech is an openly us-against-them rallying of an embattled faithful — read, small town “normal” folks — with Barack Obama cast as the dangerous interloper.

“This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America,” she said, of the Democratic candidate.

The problem long-term for Republicans — especially Republicans who would use Palin-like populist figures to rally their crucial rural base — is that Barack Obama is the future.

I don’t mean him individually. I mean people like him.

For something like 75% of Americans, the multicultural, multi-racial, urban experience IS the American experience.

And the trend is accelerating. By mid-century, we’re almost certain to be a white-minority nation, with 90% of voters living in cities and suburbs.

That’s a problem the GOP has to solve.

When Palin says Obama doesn’t see America in a normal or patriotic way, she may be channeling the fears of one community — but she’s also delivering a nasty kick to the hopes and aspirations of another (much larger) community.

All of which doesn’t mean that Republicans can’t nominate rural-friendly candidates.

But it does mean that they might consider choosing candidates who have more appeal across the cultural battle line.