Free Republic

Kicking someone while they're down has long been considered bad form - except in politics. Republicans have fallen on hard times of late, trailing Democrats in party identification by 9 points, 27% to 36%, the widest margin in many years. President Bush suffers record low approval ratings (but then, so does Congress), and the GOP's election prospects look less than rosy. But their plight has earned them little sympathy from their critics, particularly in journalist Thomas Frank's delicately titled new book "The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule." For those who may have forgotten, Frank published a bestseller shortly before the...

If there's one thing Thomas Frank has, it's certitude. As a result, he has been singularly successful in getting his political views noticed, which, of course, is his goal. No self-doubt restrains his assaults; no nuance clutters his pages; his are books not of arguments but of pronouncements. Frank clearly holds his conclusions to be self-evident, his insights both noble and incontrovertible. Thus it follows quite naturally that disagreement, even skepticism, is proof of a substantial deficiency in either intellect, instruction, or character. This belief in the superiority of his understanding has led to two books, one building on the...

Allow me to introduce myself. According to the general clucking of the national punditry, my 2004 book – "What's the Matter With Kansas?" – is supposed to have persuaded Barack Obama to describe the yeomanry of Pennsylvania as "bitter" people who "cling to guns or religion or . . . anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Mr. Obama's offense is so grave that the custodians of our national consensus have elevated it to gatehood: "Bittergate." In truth, I have no way of knowing whether some passage of mine inspired Mr. Obama's tactless assertion that the hard-done-by clutch...

In his book "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Thomas Frank asked how it is that working people in a red state like Kansas can consistently vote against their own economic interests. Indeed, getting the vote of low- and moderate-income people - particularly, males - has been a phenomenal accomplishment of the current breed of Republicans. The Karl Roves and Jim Dobsons of the world have cleverly used religion, abortion and outright homophobia to get folks to ignore their self-interests and elect candidates who do vote for so-called "family values," of course, but also work overtime to make life comfortable for...

by Mark Finkelstein September 1, 2006 - 07:01 I kept waiting. Dutifully wading through Paul Krugman's prolonged subscription-required kvetch over the economy, The Big Disconnect, I figured I'd eventually be rewarded for my perseverence with his proposed solutions - if only to be able to critique them. But the New York Times columnist's economic nostrums never came. Krugman's basic complaint is that workers haven't shared in the fruits of the extended economic expansion. This is Krugman being late to the MSM party noted here, here, and here. Even so, he chooses to ignore the reporting in his own paper that...

by Mark Finkelstein August 29, 2006 - 07:23 A New York Times editorial and an op-ed piece by one of its house columnists have something interesting in common this morning: stamp-your-feet frustration with the way the world is and an inability to suggest what should be done about it. In The Falling Paycheck, the Times editorial board complains that real wages aren't keeping up with the economy's continued expansion. "American employees have not shared in the wealth they’ve helped to create," laments the Old Gray Lady. Sure sounds as if the Times subscribes to the 'surplus value' theory of labor....

by Mark Finkelstein August 22, 2006 - 06:52 So this is Thomas Frank? This is the man so lionized by the left for his authorship of “What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America’’? Could he really have made an argument as simplistic and palpably wrong-headed as the one seemingly propounded in his New York Times column of this morning, G.O.P. Corruption? Bring In the Conservatives [subscription required]. Having read it a couple times, the answer is inescapably . . . yes. Frank's fundamental thesis is that, since conservatives don't believe in the beneficent powers of...

Thursday, June 22, 2006 What's the Matter With Massachusetts? I'm growing quite weary of the arrogant bi-coastal elites and their tired old Marxist cliches. Our Leftists call themselves "Progressives" as if their ideas are new and fresh and the wave of the future. A certain analogy goes that nations walk to the top wearing hobnailed military boots and descend into obscurity wearing silk slippers. Only within this idiom are Liberals the future of our society (if we let them be) and Conservatives the past. But in all other regards our Liberal friends are way out of whack. I frequently hear...

Teach the Fundamentals September 23, 2005 Download Windows Media PlayerListen to Rush Conduct Broadcast Excellence via Windows Media Player (highly recommended by poster) BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I got an e-mail last night, and I get a few of these but there's so much e-mail, I don't have a systemized response. But something about this e-mail I got yesterday compelled me to reply. It was an e-mail for a college student out in Oregon, and he had been given an assignment by his liberal professor. It's a big essay question related to a theory in some journalist's book, and he...

As Yogi Berra once famously said after his teammates, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, hit back-to-back homeruns in consecutive games: “It’s déjà vu all over again.” I’m 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 “Who’s 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...

June 13, 2004 'What's the Matter With Kansas?': Heartland SecurityBy JOSH CHAFETZ WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. By Thomas Frank. 306 pp. Metropolitan Books/ Henry Holt & Company. $24. IKE the most vitriolic of right-wing pundits (Ann Coulter springs unbidden to mind), Thomas Frank has a distinctly Manichean worldview. The political universe, for him, is divided between the good guys and the conservatives. The conservatives are further divided between the fools and the knaves. The fools are ''the true believers, the average folks who have been driven into right-wing politics by what...

PARIS, FRANCE--Notre Dame sits proudly in the middle of the River Seine, which winds its way through this ancient city. It is an impressive Cathedral, with its towering gothic arches and vaults, its captivating chapels, and its rich history. Although the French still celebrate July 14, when a rowdy mob of radicals freed some non-political prisoners from the Bastille, they are still sober about the excesses of the French Revolution. For one, they seem to realize that it was silly for those Revolutionaries to expel the Church from France and turn Notre Dame into the "Temple of Reason." Still, they...

Not a thing, it turns out.Kansas is a reliable "red" state; President Bush carried it by nearly 21% in 2000 and padded his margin to nearly 26% this year. The state's rock-solid support of Mr. Bush and other conservative candidates has sent at least one of its native sons, political commentator Thomas Frank, into paroxysms of rage. In his new book, "What's the Matter With Kansas?," Mr. Frank argues that all those Jayhawk State rubes have got things backward: They've continued to vote Republican as the state goes through economic hardship, even though, by doing so, they're voting against their...

Red State Victory There is something pleasantly wacky about the response of Lefty scribblers to the Republican election victory. The obvious reasons therefor, such as the voters' estimate of the trustworthiness of the Republican candidates and of the coherence of their message never occurs to blue-state pundits as they scratch their double-domes in bafflement. At the end of their cognitive tunnel, a bulb glows dimly. Then, they begin to realize that red-state voters were ignorant dolts, deluded troglodytes, primitives, fanatical Bible-toting NASCAR retards. So intellectually deprived were these plebs that it was a wonder they managed to find their way...

It's rare that a single book encapsulates an entire misbegotten mindset, but What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank manages the trick. Frank, a journalist and native Kansan who has written articles for Harper's and The Nation, and whom the Los Angeles Times has called "one of our most insightful social observers," argues that hardworking blue collar Kansans have been duped into voting against "their fundamental interests" -- as evidenced by their consistent support of Republican candidates. According to Frank, the poor deluded hicks fail to realize that Democrats are their true...