An acronym often used by self-described conservatives discussing politics is RINO, meaning “Republican In Name Only.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t really communicate beyond that circle (“those who understand, will understand”). Those of RINO tendencies themselves may not even know that they are described by the term, and simply view it as a pejorative.

In fact, it is the most truthful and pithy four letters in politics. Although pejorative, of course, it assumes the correct point of view from which to view America: we are a bourgeois nation, and the political expression of the bourgeois is the Republican Party.

Republicans themselves do not view the world in terms of class conflict, making this simple observation difficult to articulate. The “bourgeoisie” as a “class” of society is a term and concept taught by Marxists and not Republicans, but can be used here because years of the Cold War have brought Marxism’s terms and concepts into popular culture. In classical communist theory, all that is important is the production and consumption of resources, and groups called classes engage in conflict over control of such. In Marx’s time and today, the bourgeois class, or shopkeepers, oppresses the proletariat class, or workers. The bourgeois took their upper place from the aristocracy; where the aristocrats survive, the bourgeois are instead the “middle class.” The advent of Communism is said to destroy the cycle of class conflict in the birth of the “New Communist Man” who will work without coercion or oppression. This is of course a religious cult (the reader may here insert appropriate observations on the advent of Obama the Blessed in connection with this cult). What is most useful for our purposes is the observation of the unifying nature of “bourgeois values” or Weber’s “protestant work ethic.”

Another way of discussing the “middle class” is to ignore Marxism altogether and instead use the techniques of modern sociology and statistics. The most important tool is the population distribution chart, which usually produces a “bell curve.” The dome of the bell is created by the bulk of society, those who are near the average in whatever metric is being measured. The flares on each side of the main bell are the outliers, those who are very far from average. Statisticians measure the distance between the outlier and the average in what are called “standard deviations” (the reader may here insert appropriate observations on deviancy). One chart might be of annual income; another might be of adherence to traditional values or “protestant work ethic.” The overlap of these two charts effectively identifies the American middle class.

The outliers of these charts are both the poor and the rich who do not value the wealth-creating virtues of diligent work, self-restraint, and marital fidelity. (That these virtues are in fact highly correlative of upward financial mobility has been proven by other statistical analyses.) These deviants either have nothing to lose, or too much money to ever end up on the street; they might be called the “undeserving poor” and the “undeserving rich,” respectively. The average American does try to adhere to these wealth-creating virtues, and does well enough by them.

Within one standard deviation, then, average Americans share values and economic expectations. The outliers are, to use pejorative language, welfare cases and limousine liberals, who share values with each other, but not the middle.  The rich never need to worry about money, but the nanny state means that the poor can also share these economic expectations. Obviously, the Democratic Party serves the outliers, while the Republican Party voices the view of the average American. The RINO, then, is a Republican voter who has, usually as a result of financial success, little or no attachment to those virtues which brought that success.

Sarah Palin has been a kind of Rorschach test, a political inkblot by whom commentators reveal themselves by what they read into her. Her broad acceptance by rank-and-file Republicans accords with the averages, and should not be at all surprising. Those appalled by the “caribou Barbie” reveal that they identify with the limousine crowd rather than ordinary Americans. To be sure, high aspirations and devotion to personal improvement are prized by the middle class; however, falling over the edge into elitism is proof of the Democrat, or the RINO.