I live in Iowa City, a university town that is supposed to be the most liberal community in the state of Iowa. The comment boards in the local paper are dominated by hard right Palin-loving Republicans that live in town and surrounding communities. They manage to have considerable sway in county and city politics far beyond their numbers. They are representative of Palin's support, they are not going away and they are getting more radical and angry by the day. I don't think national politicians or pundits have a real understanding of where this base is coming from but if you look at your local community closely, for example at the building trades, you may get a clue.

When I dig into the background of those folks I find that they either own established small businesses or they aspire to owning a business like Joe the Plumber. What they have in common is a single minded focus on self-enrichment and a tendency to scapegoat anyone else for keeping them from achieving some imagined level of wealth.

As someone who built a small business from scratch I can understand to some extent how they get to that point. When you spend 10-12 hours a day building a business and everything city hall does seems to slow you down it is too easy to get into the frame of mind that everyone else is trying to leach off your hard work and initiative. I had enough perspective to understand that my success depended to a large degree on the greater success of the community.

But if your ONLY priority is self-interest then that attitude becomes viscous and usually racist.

Understand that percentage-wise, rural communities depend upon self-employment more than urban communities. And understand that established small businesses in rural communities are often de-facto monopolies and that is accelerating with the recession and the increase in energy prices.

These folks have alot of resources to push their priorities in local and regional politics and also as consumers for media advertisers. They are not used to actual competition in the marketplace, they are used to getting their way.  And whether they own a business or imagine themselves to be a business like Joe, they identify with raw corporate power. It is called corporatism.