What I knee-jerked about was his characterization of Bush as preppie, etc. That's the first I've seen of that and I agree.
I was dove hunting in central Texas a few weeks ago with people I had grown up with, roomed in college with, etc. They are all very conservative Republicans, and all but two are either doctors, dentists, or large corporation VPs. One is a working man, and one is an oil man who bought a lot of oil leases when oil was $8 /bbl. He has 10 times the money the rest of us have put together, now.
Anyway, I hadn't seen them in years and was amazed to hear the vituperation about Bush being a "Texan." The summation was that he went to "Yankee" prep school in the 5th grade, and only returned to Texas to go bankrupt and win the governorship on his dad's name and the disgust with Ma Richards.
Whatever your assessment of their judgment, that thinking is a real phenomenon, and there is a huge divide.
What they need to do is a critical analysis of the split in the party that is more along CLASS lines rather than geography. In my state of TN, we’ve had a string of rich, elitist RINOs elected to office that have little to do with the base Conservative voters of middle and working class. Our recent election for Mayor, which was between a rich leftist from a snooty neighborhood vs. a moderate former Democrat Congressman of more modest means saw the divisions quite stark. The rich GOP areas voted for the leftist while the working class areas like mine (a mixed-race area, which ironically elected a middle-class Republican to the local Council) voted for the moderate Democrat. The middle class split the difference and they elected the rich liberal. Our local leftist newspaper didn’t much point out the stark differences (of course, had the liberal been a wealthy Republican Conservative who won, they would’ve blasting him as to how out of touch he was with the working and middle class).
Most of those rich folks do not have to deal with the problems the transitional middle and working class folks have to. They can effectively insulate themselves from problems, they have wealthy schools, excellent police, etc., while us folks out here living in neighborhoods that were formerly safe and respectable have to deal with the invading hordes and soaring crime rate and mass-scale drops in our property values. It’s become a nightmare over the past decade, and now having to live next door to illegals that have no respect for the law, are insulated from having the cops ask them if they’re residents, and generally can get away with murder, this won’t become a “serious” problem to those wealthy folks until they start invading THEIR turf, and then it will become suddenly “important.”
As I said, the author of the article is well out of touch with the real dynamics and the true reality.