I’ve had this window open since the election with intent to summarize, review and comment. However, at this point I can only say, interesting read.
Here’s the basic premise of Frank’s book: In Kansas (and really the rest of the country) religious conservatives have overtaken the Republican Party at the grassroots level. Having been abandoned by the Democratic Party during the sixties in favor of Rainbow Coalition, urban cultural politics, these rep-Cons (Frank’s term for conservative, working-class, bible-loving former Democrats that now vote Republican) stewed in their own religious fervor–which apparently is especially feverous in Kansas and has been since the state’s radical founding–until they became a massive Jesus-infused political force and began chucking rep-Mods (Moderate, socially liberal, old school Republicans) out of office. And here’s the rub. The rep-Cons, for a variety of reasons, fully support the rep-Mods economic ideas (ideals), even though that way of thinking, economically speaking, is analogous to a slave supporting slavery.
Again, en masse, the working poor of Kansas are electing politicians that make their lives worse. And the people are doing it gleefully, out of their own free will. So they think.
