Posted on 09/28/2014 8:12:06 AM PDT by centurion316
What’s the matter with Kansas? It’s a decade since Thomas Frank launched a thousand headlines with his book of that title, itself a reference to a famous 1896 essay by Kansas journalist William Allen White. Frank’s thesis was simple: Kansans, and by extension the rest of the red states, vote against their economic interests. Or as he puts it in the first page of his book: “People getting their fundamental interests wrong is what American political life is all about.”
Is he right? Do voters in the great middle of the country ignore their economic interests to vote for the cultural populism that so offends Frank? Do they sacrifice their pocketbooks to issues like abortion and gay marriage? Frank’s quarrel is not with populism, of course, but rather the right’s use of populist rhetoric about social issues.
At the same time, Frank is no fan of the Obama administration, finding its response to our present predicaments far short of the full-throated class war that he would recommend. But for those of us who reside where Republicans are successful in politics and government, the Obama administration’s performance is the only metric available against which to measure the consequences of not voting Republican.
By that standard, then, how have red state voters fared? How are we doing, now that President Obama and his allies have carried the day?
There is no doubt that this has been the slowest recovery in modern history, and it has been particularly bad for the kind of investors who populate flyover country. While low interest rates are good for Wall Street and a government that is $18 trillion in debt, they are ravaging Midwesterners, whose idea of a retirement plan is a certificate of deposit or two at the local bank...
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Why is it somehow up to elitists on the upper west side to decide how people elsewhere should vote????
Well I don’t know about Kansas but I am glad that the Democrats DON’T decide how elections are done. We get the House even though he get 1.5 million LESS votes than the Democrats. That is scary, but good that Republicans decide districts throughout the country. We could really be screwed if Democrats decided election processes.
“For those who question Kentucky’s bipolar political psyche, spend time in Jefferson County and read the Louisville Courier. Count the number of “coexist” bumper stickers.”
Maybe so, but the folks in Kentucky must really have a hardon for Bitch because when you look at the Red vs. Blue county map in post #9, you come away with the inescapable notion that Kentucky was a “real red” state!
Bump for later.
I read Frank’s book, and it’s somewhat hilarious to see him tie himself up into ideological knots wondering why mid westerns were conservative. In short, Frank is a typical lib who understands nothing about conservatism or his own country.
The big surprise of this map is that SC is “blue” in a wide swath of territory. That must help explain Lindsey’s liberalism.
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