(Editor's note: Ralph Nichols is still ill. His column will return next week.)

Ever work with an "office wife?"

It's often the boss' secretary.

He treats her like crap. Loads her up with overtime work. Takes credit for her ideas. Pays her a pittance.

Meanwhile he basks in her admiration. Sneaks out for long golfing afternoons. Hasn't had a creative thought in decades. Soaks up the executive bonuses.

Like a victim of Stockholm syndrome, she coddles him, defends him and worries about him.

Office wives come to mind when we liberals try to figure out why so many working class citizens support conservative causes. Reagan Democrats, they are sometimes dubbed.

If you're a prosperous business guy, it makes sense to be a Republican. Republicans give you tax breaks, shovel government welfare to your corporation or just let you run wild.

The money is rolling in. Life is getting better every day in every way.

But why are working stiffs, who are struggling to stay in the middle class, carrying water for conservatives?

One valuable resource for liberals puzzling over this question is Thomas Frank's book, What's the Matter with Kansas?

Frank points out that while working class conservatives vote to stop abortion, they get rollbacks in capital gains taxes instead. They vote for a strong military and get deindustrialization.

They vote to screw "politically correct" college professors and get energy deregulation. They vote to get government off their back and get monopolies. They vote to strike terrorists and get Social Security privatization.

It's the French Revolution in reverse, Franks says. The rebels march while millionaires tremble in their mansions waiting to hear their demands.

"We are here to cut your taxes," the masses shout.

When I mention my puzzlement to conservative associates, they counter by accusing me of "class envy."

Well, I know I'll never get rich, but on the spectrum of life circumstances I feel I am pretty lucky.

It's true I had to take a vow of poverty to go into community journalism. (Some other vows would have been deal breakers.) But I figure if I can just keep the wife working, I'll be OK.

I don't know if I am part of that "liberal elite" that is, supposedly, really running the country. I confess to drinking wine, but I buy it at Grocery Outlet.

One theory offered is that evangelicals have aligned with business conservatives in hopes of getting their social agenda enacted.

Business conservatives like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush talk up their "family values" but despite the election of Republicans in six of the last nine presidential elections, that mission has not been accomplished.

As Frank points out, television and movies are coarser, gender roles are continuing to change and homosexuality is more accepted.

Business conservatives are happy to have the zeal and votes of the social conservatives.

But at the end of a long week at the office, business conservatives are as happy as anyone to score some tickets to the Fifth Avenue Theatre in downtown Seattle to catch a glimpse of a naked Morgan Fairchild as Mrs. Robinson in the stage production of The Graduate.

While evangelicals may rail against liberal writers and directors, the corporations own our increasingly consolidated mass media.

It's just business. So if "debased" culture is more profitable than "family values" culture, that's what we get.

That's why, while the Fox News Channel gives you the conservative news slant, you also get salacious saturation coverage of Anna Nicole Smith, Britney Spears and young attractive blondes who go missing.

I'm not falling into the trap of saying that government is all good and business is all bad.

What I am arguing for is a return to balance. We are in one of those robber baron eras like the Gilded Age of the 1890s or the Roaring 1920s before the Great Depression.

All the while, jobs are outsourced, worker wages remain stagnant and CEO bonuses skyrocket.

Gas prices escalate toward $4 a gallon while oil company profits hit record numbers.

Sharp increases in sub-prime mortgage payments force families out of their homes.

How's conservativism working out for you Reagan Democrats?

Eric Mathison can be reached at hteditor@robinsonnews.com or 206-388-1855.