In his article “Lie Down for America”, Thomas Frank says that the Republicans have created a ‘dominant political coalition” by attracting working-class white voters with “cultural wedge issues like guns and abortion. Frank basically asserts that Republicans in the Great Plains and other poor regions have been supporting the “wrong” party. Frank describes the Democrats as “the party of the workers, of the poor, of the weak and victimized” and for this reason, it seems likely that a very poor region would vote Democrat. This is not the case, as in Frank’s Great Plains example, a 75% majority voted for Bush. Frank claims that it is the self-denying voters of the country’s poor regions that allowed the Republican party to essentially control government in previous years. Whatever reason these low-income republicans have for their support of the party, Frank believes that they are denying their own interests. Perhaps the reason for Kansas’ overwhelming Republican support is the bumper sticker example in the article: “A Working Person that supports Democrats is like a chicken that supports Col. Sanders”. People in the Great Plains and other regions just may not want to identify as Democrats, even if their policies may be more beneficial. According to Frank, this form of conservatism is based more on moral principles than the Republican parties’ economic policy. Frank describes this is “The Great Backlash”- the backlash “imagines itself as a foe of the elite, the voice of the unfairly persecute, and places much more emphasis on conservative culture than economics. Black claims that the state of Kansas has been particularly ill-served by the economic policies of the Reagan and Bush regimes. Discontent has not caused people to embrace Democratic economic policies, but instead has pushed them further to the right as they choose to instead concentrate on conservative cultural values.

Bartels aggress with Frank on the fact that white voters without college degrees have been significantly less democratic, but claims that the shift to the Republican coalition was very different from Frank’s explanation. Bartels says the shift occurred almost entirely in the South, where Democratic support was artificially inflated for a long period of time. Bartels also disagrees with the statement that ‘culture outweighs economics” among Frank’s group of working-class white voters. Bartels also identifies the fact that most of Frank’s group of working-class white voters describe themselves as closer to Democrats on social issues. Bartels says there is no evidence to suggest that economic issues have diminished in electoral significance over the past 20 years. Additionally, though the political significance of social issues has increased, it has increased less among Frank’s working-class less-educated group than among whites with college degrees. These working class voters describe themselves as more Republican on economic issues, and more Democratic on social issues.

I would have to say that I agree with Frank’s argument. I can see the argument that working-class white voters often vote Republican for moral/cultural issues rather than for the party’s economic policies. This is illustrated in the Republican ideals like gun control, emphasis on religious values and anti-abortion. Though these cultural ideals are obviously not the same for every Republican, they Republicans have succeeded at capturing a support base (working class southern whites) who may benefit more under Democratic economic policies. Even though the Republican coalition has been significantly weakened after 2004, Republicans still took most of the South in the 2008 campaign. Additionally, 2008 was a rather unique year with Obama and Hillary competing against each other, but no strong elite-backed Republican candidate. Discontent over the war in Iraq and Republican economic policy grew, but for the most part the South still voted Republican, including overwhelmingly in Kansas.