He’ll deny that that’s what this is, of course, but … that’s what it is. He’s been pushing the idea of “Sam’s Club Republicans” for fully eight years now, so no surprise at the thrust of his message here: Blue-collar all the way, a guy who understands the plight of middle-class Americans in a way that certain “country club elitists” — ahem — never will. All of which is fine, although it feels like a message geared more towards a general election than to the Republican primary, where, I think, any overt class appeal will be viewed as suspiciously left-ish. (Huckabee went that route for awhile in the last primary and he remains a whipping boy for HA commenters to this day, albeit not for that reason alone, natch.) One obvious problem for T-Paw: How’s he going to position himself as the “authenticity” candidate among base voters if Palin and/or Huck are in the race? In fact, I’m not sure he’d necessarily be seen as more authentic than Thune or Daniels either, both of whom also come from working-class midwestern backgrounds. But then, no need to overthink this; his problem at the moment is getting people to find out who he is, so here’s step one on the path.