The great reservoir of common sense in this country is not within the credentialed elite. From Karl Zinsmeister at realclearwire.com:
Over the coming weeks, a new band of Republicans will announce themselves as candidates in the next presidential race. The frontrunners will be scrappy populists. Today’s most successful center-right politicians are not only champions of the common man but energetic opponents of the idea that our society needs reordering by credentialed authorities.
Ron DeSantis grew up in a blue-collar family, worked his way into Yale with his brains and baseball talent, then went home and built a political career on the idea that “people are able to make decisions on their own.” Florida’s navigation of the COVID crisis, says the governor, established “a blueprint for governance” that rebukes “the entrenched elites” who so often dominate modern society. “Florida is proof positive that we, the people, are not powerless in the face of these elites.”
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott was raised in poverty, went to college on a football scholarship while his brother became a sergeant major in the U.S. Army, then entered politics to fend off the idea that ordinary people can only improve their station through the interventions of a federal patriciate.
Greg Abbott, who lost his father early in life and then was disabled and confined to a wheelchair, gained national prominence as Texas’ governor battling the notion that problems should be solved by mandates from erudite Feds.
Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s chief executive, left a finance career and dove into politics to defend everyday parents from fouls and interference by officials claiming they know better what children need.
The most striking change in modern American politics is a flipping of the class loyalties of the two major parties. For decades, Democrats were seen as defenders of the little guy, and the GOP as home for pillars of the establishment. But country-club Republicans have been displaced by country-music Republicans, while our socio-economic gentry of lawyers, Wall Streeters, professors, Hollywood moguls, tech millionaires, media influencers, and others from the beau monde have flooded into the “D’s” column.
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 