On his way to re-election exactly one month ago today, President Bush carried the state of Kansas over John Kerry by a whopping margin of 62 percent to 37 percent. Bush won 103 of the state's 105 counties, carrying many of them with at least 80 percent of the vote.
Why is Kansas, a largely working-class state once known for its radical liberalism, now one of the reddest red states in the country? Thomas Frank attempts to answer this question in his brilliant new book, \What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.""
Frank, a Kansas native, describes the perplexing contradiction of farmers and blue-collar workers consistently voting for extreme right-wing Republicans whose economic policies throw them off their land, bust their unions and send their jobs overseas. It isn't that ordinary Kansans don't see how badly they've been hurt. On the contrary, they see it every day as they walk through their burned-out, Great Plains towns that were built upon booming industries but were left to rot when businesses jumped town in search of cheaper labor. Make no mistake, Kansans are furious about this situation.
But upon whom do they project their fury? On huge agribusiness conglomerates that have devastated family farms and ruined small towns? On free-market politicians who have loosened government regulation of agribusiness while subsidizing it with greater and greater amounts of taxpayer money?
No, they take out their fury on liberals. Every day they hear Rush Limbaugh on the radio, Bill O'Reilly on TV and Ann Coulter in print telling them the country is in moral decline and it's the fault of gays, feminists and atheists. These people, says the conservative Club for Growth in one commercial, are part of a ""tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show.""
This is the mentality Frank refers to as ""The Backlash."" In the 1960s, liberals considered themselves rebels against a conservative establishment, but now conservatives consider themselves rebels against a haughty, liberal establishment even though conservatives have virtually controlled all three branches of government for four years and counting.
To combat the plagues of same-sex marriage and latte-drinking, Kansas conservatives mobilize fiercely around social issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and the teaching of evolution in schools while virtually ignoring economic issues. They elect Republican senators like the pious Sam Brownback, whose enthusiasm in combating abortion and vulgarity in the mass media, is exceeded only by his friendliness to any and all pro-corporate legislation, and Pat Roberts, who authored the badly-named Freedom To Farm Act, which almost caused a return to sharecropping.
Frank addresses the disconnect conservative voters have between their state's crumbling economy and the economic policies of Brownback, Roberts and the rest of their right-wing heroes. They rage against the lavish lifestyles and social liberalism of CEOs and their families, who are secluded behind tall gates within cushy Johnson County in East Kansas, but they get back at them by electing politicians who cut those people's taxes and deregulate their industries.
Of course, this only increases the hardship for movement conservatives, who are, by and large, financially modest. As an added insult, their leaders never succeed in banning abortion or making the entertainment industry less crude or enhancing the role of God in government.
As things like homosexuality gain greater understanding and acceptance, conservatives become more and more enraged and move more and more to the right. But they never get anywhere because their leaders' right-wing social policy is coupled with right-wing economic policies that takes precedence whenever the two come into conflict, even with the ultra-religious Sam Brownback, who declines to take on Rupert Murdoch even though Fox is the biggest network purveyor of trashy content.
How does the Republican Party get away with telling voters they have better morals even as they send away jobs and deregulate corporations? Frank analyzes this question in depth, in part blaming the Democratic Party for turning its back on blue-collar voters by mimicking Republican pro-corporate economic policies and thus allowing red herring social issues to dominate the national agenda.
But to get the full story, you need to read the book. It's a straightforward, ironic and fascinating 250-page read. If you are interested in the political psychology of how a red state becomes a red state or if you're just baffled as to why so many working-class people vote against their own economic interests, I wholeheartedly recommend you pick up ""What's the Matter with Kansas?""
opinion@dailycardinal.com.
