August 31, 2006

Tearing Down Building Red America

Former Nashvillian Daniel Casse reviews Washington Post reporter Tom Edsall's new book, Building Red America, in the Wall Street Journal today. He doesn't much like it. The review is available to WSJ.com subscribers only, but here's an excerpt...

...most readers will not find much that is new here. Like many before him, he describes the economic power of the growing investor class, the close ties between corporations and Washington's political culture, and the rise of politically active evangelicals. In Mr. Edsall's telling, the middle class's fear of tax increases - combined with the social conservatives' loathing of the social-sexual revolution - has created a wide-reaching Republican base. Fear and greed, it would seem, are the main things that explain GOP success.

To buttress his thesis, Mr. Edsall relies on many long quotations from academics, journalists, pollsters and a few intemperate and garrulous conservatives. But there is very little in-the-field reporting in "Building Red America," despite Mr. Edsall's credentials as an old-school newspaper man. He writes endlessly about the "coordinated machinations of the conservative movement," yet he makes no effort to explore the think tanks, the mega-churches, the small-business coalitions, the fund-raising groups, the bloggers, the magazines, the lobbyists and the party activists that make up today's loose Republican confederation.

So determined is Mr. Edsall to show that the Republican Party is a monolith, controlled by a coterie of K Street lobbyists and evangelical activists, that he barely mentions the current tumult in the Republican ranks. Immigration, White House spending, the war in Iraq - each has stirred GOP dissent and threatened mutiny against a sitting Republican president. But to give such rancor its due would shatter Mr. Edsall's overarching thesis of a lockstep Republican drive for power.

As a result, there is a certain Rip Van Winkle quality to "Building Red America." Mr. Edsall writes darkly about the Republican intent to roll back the welfare state, as if it hadn't been the topic of a hundred Newt Gingrich speeches. He announces a "yawning ideological gap" between the Democratic and Republican coalitions, as if no one else had noticed the red-state/blue-state divide during the past two presidential election cycles. He mines congressional voting records to discover -hold onto your hat - that Republicans are more supportive of the Pentagon than Democrats.

Mr. Edsall is slightly more persuasive when he documents the liabilities of the Democratic Party, arguing (contrary to many other analysts) that the resurgence of progressive movements will not spur a populist, center-left majority. But here, too, he seems out of touch. He ascribes the weakness of Democrats to their failure to generate as much anger as Republicans. Really? Has he never listened to Air America or read the Daily Kos blog when the subject of Karl Rove or Dick Cheney comes up?

If you're still inclined to buy Edsall's book, do so through the link above - at least that way some of the profits will go toward supporting BillHobbs.com, just one small node in the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.