To bounce off the previous post a bit, I wonder if the punditocracy's odd valuing of Republican personality traits isn't a sort of compensatory move for the chattering class's distaste for Republican policy ideas. If you want to be balanced, but think it's stupid to say that tax cuts raise revenues, you need to find some grounds on which to compliment Republicans.
So far as I can tell, these grounds tend to be that vaunted Heartland "authenticity" that journalistic elites are so acutely aware that they lack, or their apparent toughness, which journalistic elites are also acutely aware that they lack. The folks populating the Sunday shows think -- and are probably right in thinking -- that they know a helluva lot more about social policy than Fred Thompson. But they don't think they're tougher than him, or more of a Tennessean. So those are the ground on which he's complimented. And since journalist types don't know enough to judge the worth of such things, and are only lauding the qualities in the first place because they think the rubes like 'em (and what the rubes like has a talismanic power to those self-conscious about their class), they tend to mention those issues a lot, and do so utterly uncritically.
