Elites in the media and in both political parties don’t like John McCain’s choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate. But conservative activists are incredibly enthused. It is likely that, if Palin performs well, popular opinion at large will also respond favorably to her. What is going on here? A phenomenon that has occurred, as Jeffrey Bell has pointed out, time and again in modern American politics: the elite opinion stream and the popular opinion stream are running against one another. What has tended to happen over the years, of course, is that the popular opinion stream wins – not only politically, but (most of the time) on the merits as well.