If Mitt Romney becomes the Republican nominee and ­faces off against Barack Obama in November, we may finally be able to answer a question that has vexed students of American politics since the heyday of George Wallace: Which elite do white, blue-collar Americans hate more?

Despite Newt Gingrich’s apparent surge in South Carolina, Romney remains the odds-on favorite for the Republican nod. And a Romney-Obama contest would pit the very personification of the two elites that generations of Americans have been brought up to loathe: the paper-shuffling, unfeeling banker, utterly out of touch with most Americans’ concerns, and who comes from inherited wealth to boot; and the cool, academic social engineer who is culturally estranged from the white working class and isn’t opposed to governments helping racial minorities.

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