"What's the Matter with Kansas?"
I’ve been gone for awhile, but, as I understand it, Kansas essentially has three political parties now—the moderate Republicans, the social conservative Republicans, and the Democrats. Clearly, the moderate Republicans present an opportunity for Democrats—they think more like us than like their party compatriots—and we’ve occasionally won elections in Kansas because of it.
You wonder: Why do the moderates stay Republican? Simple inertia may be one reason. (An object at rest tends to stay at rest.) Another reason is history. Kansas came into the Union as part of one of the truly great political movements in American history—the coalescing of anti-slavery sentiment into a political movement which formed the then new Republican Party.
The “slave power” tried hard to win Kansas, but eventually had to give way to the free-staters (many from Massachusetts) who moved to Kansas precisely in order to vote out the pro-slavery “Missouri ruffians” who had seized power in the state. Kansas would be pro-union and anti-slavery, and the Republican Party—Lincoln’s Republican Party—would become its political bedrock.
Since the beginning of the United States, there has always been a “southern party” and a “northern party.” From 1800 to 1964, the Democrats were the southern party and the Federalists, then the Whigs, then the Republicans were the northern party. When the Democrats rejected segregation in 1964, the GOP picked it up, and the south began to shift Republican. In the 1970’s, the northeast, upper midwest and far west began to shift Democratic so that now, today, the Democrats are the northern party and the Republicans are the party of Jeff Davis. For Kansas, the “southern party” now holds sway in a state that once shed its blood for the cause of slavery abolition. Ah, the little ironies of history!
Frank is less persuasive when he says that the “culture war” voters don’t have anything to show for their efforts. I’d say they’ve gotten quite a lot—a raft of revanchist judges all through the judiciary, and social conservatives seeded throughout the bureaucracy. (The gift shop at the Grand Canyon, with the approval of the National Park Service, is now selling Grand Canyon: A Different View, which argues that the Grand Canyon was formed by Noah’s flood and that the earth is only about 10,000 years old.)
He correctly identifies one of the main contradictions in the electorate however—the GOP coalition of moneyed capitalists and the religious right, possibly the strangest political bedfellows since FDR got the black vote and the racist vote. The religious right thinks “loony liberals” have somehow, against everybody’s will, foisted their immoral values—sex, in other words—on the rest of society. (Janet Jackson’s booby popped out because liberals wanted it to.) What they seem incapable of seeing is that our society is the way it is because of capitalism.
Sex attracts an audience and sells product. That’s just the way it is. The right-wingers’ beef is not really with liberals, but with capitalists, especially those who run their favorite network, Fox, which is one of the worst offenders. (I had to laugh about the NFL flap. Monday Night Football’s audience share is down about 3% since last year. Naturally, they turned to sex to try to juice up their ratings. Somehow, as per usual, the liberals are to blame for that nice white girl dropping her towel in the locker room. Don’t we all know that pro football, with its Coors twins and bump-and-grind cheerleaders, is a “family show”?)
It’s all a money deal. The reason the religious right won’t see this is because they can’t. To do so would upend their whole theology. They are battling for the Lord, or so they think, and the Wall Street crowd, their electoral allies, must be—have to be—on the side of the angels along with themselves.
