Back on August 1st, we wrote:

In many TV sit-coms and comedy movies from the 1960s through the early 1980s, you'll see the cliché of the wealthy country club Republican, ala Nelson Rockefeller. Jim Backus' blue double-breasted blazer-wearing Thurston Howell III character was an example of this; David Ogden Stiers' Major Charles Emerson Winchester on M*A*S*H (ironically, Winchester was a Boston Brahmin, like Senator Kerry) was another.

George H.W. Bush's image was very much in that mold. But he interrupted a flip-over that began with President Reagan's self-made aw-shucks folksy style and continued with George W. Bush's cowboy boots-wearing, BBQ-loving manner and the Texas twang of his voice.

It highlights an interesting trend in politics over the last 25 years:

The shift of the Republican party as now being associated with "the little guy", the average man--who might be a blue collar guy, or he might be a self-employed high tech entrepreneur. But either case, he's working hard to get by and better himself. In contrast, the Democrats are now very much the party of the elite: ambulance chasing trial lawyers (including John Edwards himself), often big business, foreign interests, the media, academia, and most dramatically, Hollywood.

Update: Cassandra of I Love Jet Noise has some additional thoughts and links about Sowell's article, and where the big money in politics goes.