The truth about Republican charges of 'elitism'

Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas?, has a column in the Wall Street Journal, of all places:

Consider, for example, the one fateful charge that the punditry and the other candidates have fastened upon Mr. Obama — "elitism." No one means by this term that Mr. Obama is a wealthy person (he wasn't until last year), or even that he is an ally of the wealthy (although he might be that). What they mean is that he has committed a crime of attitude, and revealed his disdain for the common folk.

It is a stereotype you have heard many times before: Besotted with latte-fueled arrogance, the liberal looks down on average people, confident that he is a superior being. He scoffs at religion because he finds it to be a form of false consciousness. He believes in regulation because he thinks he knows better than the market. [...]

It is by this familiar maneuver that the people who have designed and supported the policies that have brought the class divide back to America — the people who have actually, really transformed our society from an egalitarian into an elitist one — perfume themselves with the essence of honest toil, like a cologne distilled from the sweat of laid-off workers. Likewise do their retainers in the wider world — the conservative politicians and the pundits who lovingly curate all this phony authenticity — become jes' folks, the most populist fellows of them all.