This discussion came up in the Comments section so I thought I'd explain. First, this is not my theory; it's somebody else's idea, I don't remember whose. Steven Den Beste at USS Clueless (check blogroll) has a link to the original article somewhere.

Anyway, according to this theory, Americans are divided into four main currents of political thought, Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, Hamiltonian, and Wilsonian, according to the following criteria, which I've sort of expanded upon.

HAMILTONIANS

Elitist
Urban
Business-oriented
Little government intervention in economy
Internationalist but anti-military intervention
Free trade
Little emphasis on personal morality
Pragmatist
Today's archetype: Wall Street banker or lawyer

JEFFERSONIANS

Populist
Rural
Farming and small-business oriented
Some government intervention in economy
Isolationist
High tariffs
Little emphasis on personal morality
Idealist
Today's archetype: Guy selling Dead T-shirts, Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, California

JACKSONIANS

Populist
Rural
Midwestern/Southern
Isolationist, except when angered
Some government intervention in economy
High emphasis on personal morality/religion
Generally pragmatist unless under influence of Jesus/alcohol
Today's archetype: A Kansas City car dealer

WILSONIANS

Elitist
Urban
Bicoastal
Interventionist, except when disillusioned
Some/high government intervention in economy
High emphasis on personal morality/religion
Idealist
Today's archetype: University professor

The deal is that to be successful a policy must really please at least three of these groups. World War II, probably the most uniting event the USA ever experienced, got all four groups in favor of it. The Vietnam War was lost not when the Wilsonians bailed out on it in about 1965, nor quite yet when the Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians bailed out in about '68, but when the Jacksonians finally threw in the towel about 1970 or so. Regarding the civil rights movement, the Jeffersonians, Hamiltonians, and Wilsonians were convinced by the 1950s, but it took at least another generation to convince most of the Jacksonians. Today President Bush has most of the Jacksonians and the Hamiltonians pretty much with him, but the Wilsonians and Jeffersonians are completely opposed. Most Americans, I think, are Jacksonians at bottom--radical small-D democrats with a mean streak. A hell of a lot aren't, though, and if Kerry can win over some of the Hamiltonian vote--they're few but influential--he's likely to win--unless he absolutely destroys his own current level of support among the Jacksonians, which is entirely possible.

How would you divide up Spaniards? Certainly a great many of them are Marxist, mostly very superficially. Most are also Fascist, though they'd never admit it, and I mean Fascist not as an insult but in the sense of a paternalistic bureaucratic government-directed mixed economy with extensive social services, which I believe is originally modeled on Bismarck's Germany and perhaps reached its apogee in Vichy France, and has now been institutionalized in the European Union. A lot of country folk in Spain might fit pretty well into the Jeffersonian category, though they're all now dependent on government subsidy. Spanish intellectuals almost all fall into the disillusioned-Wilsonian category. Traditional Spanish conservatives would certainly have their own category; they're not very similar to either the Hamiltonians or the Jacksonians.

Spain's major problem in the 1930s was that Spaniards of that time fell into three categories: Rightists who wanted to kill Leftists, Leftists who wanted to kill Rightists, and everybody else who mostly just didn't want to get killed. Now both Rightists and Leftists have a bad reputation around here, because both of them killed plenty of the middle group, though the Leftists have managed to whitewash their past better than the Rightists. Partly this is because Franco's Rightist regime was sitting around repressing all the Spanish people for thirty-some years, while the Leftists only got to repress people in their half of Spain for three years. The bad stuff Franco did is on the record. The bad stuff the Communists or, worse, the Anarchists, would have done if they'd won is unknown, though if we take an educated guess based on what happened in Barcelona under the Republic we can feel pretty confident that the answer is plenty.