{"id":1766,"date":"2007-01-18T13:56:03","date_gmt":"2007-01-18T20:56:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/2007\/01\/18\/whats-the-matter-with-kansas\/"},"modified":"2007-01-18T13:56:03","modified_gmt":"2007-01-18T20:56:03","slug":"whats-the-matter-with-kansas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/2007\/01\/18\/whats-the-matter-with-kansas\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s the Matter with Kansas?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Read What’s the Matter with Kansas?<\/a> recently. The book homed in on and answered a question that has been bugging me for a long time.<\/p>\n

The way I see it, the Republican party doesn’t seem like it should hold together as a single party. There are the country-club conservatives, people interested in laissez-faire economic policies (or blatantly favorable economic policies) and not particularly interested in social issues. And there are the red-meat conservatives, who seem more populist, but are mostly interested in social issues. The way I’ve always perceived it, each pays lip-service to the interests of the other, but ultimately their interests don’t overlap, and may even clash.<\/p>\n

Kansas<\/i> responds to this directly, and essentially portrays the plebian red-meat conservatives as the willing dupes of the country-club conservatives, who push on hot-button issues to get them worked up, without ever really throwing them a bone. People always talk about banning abortion, but nobody ever does anything about it.<\/p>\n

And this is where I find a point of disagreement: over the past few years, right-wing triumphalism has led to more actual action on those issues. South Dakota did outlaw abortion. Most states have constitutional amendments banning gay marriage.<\/p>\n

And of course, over the past 6 years, a different wing of conservatism has achieved prominence, the neoconservatives, the foreign-intervention maximalists. Frank doesn’t really address this faction, but in the current political climate, it’s impossible to talk about politics without talking about that.<\/p>\n

Still, these are isolated problems in what is otherwise an interesting and entertaining read. Frank does show how the embrace of laissez-faire principles has damaged Kansas, but those principles have become part of the red-meat faction’s holy crusade, even to the direct self-impoverishment of its members. And shows how the bizarre history of the state brought them 180\u00c2\u00b0 politically to where they are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apparently, the problem is that Kansans don’t know where their bread is buttered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[350,467],"class_list":["post-1766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-politics","tag-vrwc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}