Frist - and Tennessee - Explained
This piece on Bill Frist and Tennessee's politics in the Weekly Standard is just plain excellent.

If you went into a lab and tried to create a state that would be perfectly suited for producing successful national politicians, you would create Tennessee. It is southern, which is important because the South is both the largest and the fastest growing region of the country. But it is not too southern. It is rich, and has that huge fundraising base, but it is not culturally elitist, like New York and California. Most important, it is heterodox. If you are going to live in Tennessee and thrive there, you cannot live in an insular cultural enclave, the way Trent Lott can in Mississippi, or the way Nancy Pelosi can in the Bay Area. In Tennessee you have to travel to the eastern part of the state, where they supported the Union, you have to travel to the western part, where they supported the Confederacy, and you have to travel to West Nashville, where they support Cadillac dealerships. If you travel and campaign throughout Tennessee, you are apt to acquire an instinctive feel for how different types of people think and react.

Start with Nashville. The city is hard to figure out because, though it isn't very big, it exists on many different planes. Beyond the Belle Meade elite, there are the music people, who live in the exurbs or in rural mansions. When Bill Frist was growing up, he would not necessarily have had any contact with the country music community, who would have been regarded as rednecks. Even today, when the music industry is just another successful business sector, the visitor is surprised to find that country music has a relatively low profile in Nashville. Country music doesn't dominate the radio dial. It doesn't color local conversation the way the movies color chatter in Los Angeles. As Lamar Alexander, a successful governor and newly elected senator, notes, "Country music still sits uncomfortably in Nashville, like McDonald's in Japan."

Then, outside of Nashville, there are collar counties, such as Williamson County, with McMansions, mega-churches, G. Gordon Liddy fans, and new money. These fast-growing places are extremely Republican, anti-tax and anti-government, and are looked upon with bewilderment and suspicion by many people in Bill Frist's neighborhood. There are also the religious elites. Nashville is home to several denominations, including the conservative Church of Christ. The city hosts the largest publisher of Bibles in the world.

It's long, well-written, mostly accurate and highly deserving of your time.