By David Nather, CQ Staff

There might have been a time when Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin could talk about “the real America” without causing a big uproar, or when Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota could get away with questioning the patriotism of the Democratic presidential nominee. But not this year, and not the way they did it.

Last week, Palin apologized for praising “the real America” and “pro-America areas of this great nation” at a North Carolina fundraiser. And Bachmann put her re-election in jeopardy after an appearance on MSNBC’s “Hardball” in which she pondered the possibility that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama “may have anti-American views” and challenged the news media to produce an “expose” of whether members of Congress are “pro-America or anti-America.”

Palin and Bachmann got the most attention for their remarks, but many Republicans on the trail have recently invoked the notion that they stood for genuine American values while the Democratic opposition scorned such things. Nancy Pfotenhauer, a top adviser to Republican presidential nominee John McCain , claimed that “real Virginia” would support him even if he didn’t gain traction in the Democratic-dominated northern part of the commonwealth. Rep. Robin Hayes of North Carolina claimed that “liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God,” and Rep. John R. “Randy” Kuhl Jr. of New York said Democrats want Americans to “suffer” for their own political gain.

Their comments fueled a backlash that seemed unusually strong, given that Republicans have drawn more public support in past years with only slightly milder appeals to patriotism and the virtues of small-town America. Even Palin drew praise, not jeers, for noting in her convention speech that “we grow good people in our small towns” who “do some of the hardest work” and are “always proud of America” (though a chorus of liberal jeers eventually rose when the lines were attributed to the late extreme-right columnist Westbrook Pegler).

The difference this time, say some GOP strategists, is that these Republicans went overboard with their rhetoric and actively shut out large groups of people. Others, however, believe the significance of the controversy goes beyond rhetorical excess. Democratic strategists see the backlash as a sign of broader damage to the credibility of the Republican Party, while outside analysts think the party has misjudged the public’s appetite for such attacks at a time of widespread economic anxiety.

It’s not that the culture wars are dead, they say, but anyone who tries to revive them now — from McCain and Palin on down to the congressional level — is tone-deaf to the mood of the public.

“We had the luxury, perhaps, to be able to deal with that kind of politics of values division in the past. We don’t have that kind of luxury now,” said John Kenneth White, a professor of politics at Catholic University and author of the CQ Press title, “The Values Divide: American Politics and Culture in Transition.”

With all of the serious issues at stake in this election, White said, “the Republicans find themselves in a situation where the old rules of politics simply don’t work anymore.”

Kathleen Parker, a conservative columnist who has called for Palin to step down from the McCain ticket, said the old narrative of elites vs. rural America has worked before because there is some truth in it; people in rural areas often do feel that they’re viewed with contempt by people who live in big cities and have postgraduate degrees. “Unfortunately, McCain has decided to get elected on that,” she said, while Obama has built his career on a message with broader appeal — that “we’re not that, we’re one America.”

With the exception of the Republican base, Parker said, “most Americans don’t want to demonize their fellow citizens, even if they disagree with their politics.”

Division Problems

To Republican strategists, the big mistake of the “real America” and “anti-America” statements is that they turn the focus away from a contest of ideas and divide the country into good and bad people, a message that inevitably drives a significant chunk of the candidates’ intended audience away from what they have to say.

“When you label somebody as anti-America or you call them liberals, those are tag lines that are more about what’s wrong with them as people than what’s wrong with their policies,” said Kevin Madden, a veteran of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. And because such statements are immediately circulated through e-mail, blogs and YouTube, “the speed with which these things are echoed and magnified is so much greater,” he said.