Posted on 03/15/2005 4:49:04 PM PST by AZ_Cowboy
As Yogi Berra once famously said after his teammates, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, hit back-to-back homeruns in consecutive games: Its déjà vu all over again. Im getting the same feeling about something less awe-inspiring: that is, the way political pros and media types consistently get culturally motivated voters wrong.
Since the elections, there have been many attempts to understand the so-called values voter. Some people, like the editors of Time magazine, created a Whos Who of influential evangelicals. The unspoken assumption is that millions of Christian voters take their marching orders from these leaders.
Others, especially abortion and gay rights activists, deny that theres anything worth understanding. Arguing, as lawyers put it, in the alternative, they say that these voters didnt help re-elect the president, and if they did, you wouldnt listen to them anyway, much less bargain with them, because they are bigots.
One explanation getting a lot of attention these days is Thomas Franks recent book Whats the Matter with Kansas? The title dates back to an 1896 essay with the same title. Then as now, the success of a populist movement, which included many Christians, horrified polite opinion. And like today, some of the establishment couldnt be bothered with trying to understand it. Instead, the famous journalist William Allen White insulted his readers in an essay Whats the Matter With Kansas?
To his credit, Thomas Frank treats his subjects with more respect. Still, he ends up insulting them because he doesnt understand what motivates them.
Frank correctly notes that many conservative Christians dont personally benefit from Republican economic policies. So why do they do vote the way they do?
His answer is essentially that they fall for a con job. Republicans and their allies portray conservatism as a revolt of the little people against a high and mighty liberal elite. They employ the hallucinatory appeal of cultural issues, like abortion, to stir up the inexhaustible right-wing outrage. In their anger at liberal elites in media, law, and politics, Christians dont see that theyre being had.
See what I mean? When wealthy liberals support candidates who might raise their taxes, theyre called principled and idealistic. When Christians disregard their own economic interests, theyre called angry and suspicious.
Frank does write that somewhere in the last four decades liberalism ceased to be relevant to huge portions of its traditional constituency, but he doesnt have a clue as to why. That is not surprising for someone who refers to the hallucinatory appeal of cultural issues.
Apparently, Frank finds it hard to imagine that people might genuinely believe that the sanctity of life and preserving the traditional family take precedence over their pocketbooks. They may wish that they didnt have to choose between the two, but their votes reflect sincere priorities, not gullibility.
In the end, for Frank and others, the matter with Kansas and places like it is that, like a century ago, people arent voting the way polite opinion thinks they ought to. And now, as then, its the peoples, not the elites, fault. Its the kind of reasoning that makes every post-election cycle a case of déjà vu all over again. Once again, they just dont get it.
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For further reading and information:
Todays BreakPoint offer: In the BreakPoint CD Setting Your Moral Compass, Charles Colson addresses key moral issues facing America: from terrorism to sanctity of life, marriage, religious liberty, human rights, the media, marginalized citizens, faith-based solutions, judicial roles, and education.
Read this interview with Thomas Frank, author of Whats the Matter with Kansas?
Read William Allen Whites essay Whats the Matter with Kansas?
BreakPoint Commentary No. 050202, Political Payback: Does Bush Owe Religious Conservatives?
David Tebaldi, Moral questions we ignore, Boston Globe, 11 March 2005.
Jean Torkelson, Faith important to left and right, Rocky Mountain News, 10 March 2005.
Chuck Colson is founder and chairman of BreakPoint Online, a Townhall.com member group.
©2005 BreakPoint Online
Major bump. All this does is point out the marxist views of the "Franks" of this country.
FMCDH(BITS)
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