What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart...

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 336 pages
• Published by: Holt Paperbacks April 14, 2005
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 080507774X
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0805077742
• Book Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Weighs: 10.4 ounces

Product Review
The largely blue collar citizens of Kansas can be counted upon to be a "red" state in any election, voting solidly Republican and possessing a deep animosity toward the left. This, according to author Thomas Frank, is a pretty self-defeating phenomenon, given that the policies of the Republican Party benefit the wealthy and powerful at the great expense of the average worker. According to Frank, the conservative establishment has tricked Kansans, playing up the emotional touchstones of conservatism and perpetuating a sense of a vast liberal empire out to crush traditional values while barely ever discussing the Republicans' actual economic policies and what they mean to the working class. Thus the pro-life Kansas factory worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically. To much of America, Kansas is an abstract, "where Dorothy wants to return. Where Superman grew up." But Frank, a native Kansan, separates reality from myth in What's the Matter with Kansas and tells the state's socio-political history from its early days as a hotbed of leftist activism to a state so entrenched in conservatism that the only political division remaining is between the moderate and more-extreme right wings of the same party. Frank, the founding editor of The Baffler and a contributor to Harper's and The Nation, knows the state and its people. He even includes his own history as a young conservative idealist turned disenchanted college Republican, and his first-hand experience, combined with a sharp wit and thorough reasoning, makes his book more credible than the elites of either the left and right who claim to understand Kansas. --John Moe --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker
Kansas, once home to farmers who marched against "money power," is now solidly Republican. In Frank's scathing and high-spirited polemic, this fact is not just "the mystery of Kansas" but "the mystery of America." Dismissing much of the received punditry about the red-blue divide, Frank argues that the problem is the "systematic erasure of the economic" from discussions of class and its replacement with a notion of "authenticity," whereby "there is no terrible economic turn a conservative cannot do unto his buddy in the working class, as long as cultural solidarity has been cemented over a beer." The leaders of this backlash, by focussing on cultural issues in which victory is probably impossible (abortion, "filth" on TV), feed their base's sense of grievance, abetted, Frank believes, by a "criminally stupid" Democratic strategy of triangulation. Liberals do not need to know more about nascar; they need to talk more about money and class.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Reader Reviews
This review is from: What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (Hardcover) It's very interesting to see the book's detractors on this forum, many of whom have clearly not read it, saying *exactly* the things Frank predicts they will, as if from a familiar, shopworn script. I agree with the reviewer who said that the key to this problem is that many of these voters have been convinced that social issues are more important than economic ones. Contrary to what others have insinuated, it's not that these individuals disagree with progressives on economic issues, but that they are goaded into thinking that whether they are able to own an AK-47 is more important than whether they will be able to afford a life-saving operation for their sick child. A healthy, well-educated child will grow up empowered and less likely to want or need that AK-47, and that's the connection that is critical, but difficult, to make. Frank implies the answer to this problem while not tackling it explicitly. It is combatting the anti-intellectual, anti- "elitist" rhetoric, repeated again and again and drummed into the brain, that soon overshadows everything else. We can see it aped right here in this forum, by people who think that living in the Northeast or buying a hybrid car automatically makes you an elite, while the true elites undermine others' ability to make it on a level playing field and then laugh all the way to the bank. It is not about big vs. small government, it is about government (of whatever size) privileging the haves at the expense of the have nots. Excellent, thoughtful, insightful book.