In 2004, the GOP-aligned Club for Growth (an organization composed largely of dirt farmers) ran an ad calling Howard Dean’s campaign a “latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving left-wing freak show.” When John Kerry bested Dean for the Democratic nomination, George W. Bush’s campaign ran an ad that featured him windsurfing. Bush’s commerce secretary declared that Kerry “looked French.”

And Republicans don’t use class warfare only against Democrats. They use it against Mitt Romney. “Even the richest man can’t buy back his past,” announced a Rick Perry ad last October. “This is a campaign of people power versus money power,” declared Newt Gingrich this February. “We’re just not going around meeting with CEOs and in the big cities,” added Rick Santorum in March. “This campaign is living off the hard work of average ordinary people across this country who want to see a fundamental change, not on folks who have—well, let’s say a special interest in electing their candidate.”

For his part, Romney responded by calling Gingrich “a wealthy man, a very wealthy man. If you have a half a million dollar purchase from Tiffany’s, you’re not a middle-class American.”