Upper-class twit of the year: John McCain

"Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the proposed package of tax cuts for small businesses that Democrats are pushing is years too late and accused them of playing "class warfare" by moving to let the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire." — Washington Post

It always used to be so baffling to Americans — the cap-doffing deference shown the upper classes by the working class in Great Britain. Why would people on the lowest rung of society have any interest in propping up a system that kept them licking boots? And yet exactly the same fear of upsetting the super-rich grips Republicans, for whom anything less than the cosiest of tax privelages amounts to "class warfare" on millionaires. America's obsequiousness towards its own ruling class is just as baffflingly entrenched as Britain's ever was. In fact, I would say that right now, Britain is probably the more genuinely meritocratic of the two countries — certainly the one whose tax code encourages the greater social fluidity. Words I never thought I'd utter.