Thomas Frank: How Kansans (and others) screw themselves by voting GOP [View All]

[BurtWorm]

As excerpted in George Scialabba's Nation review of "What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040614&s=scialabba
The trick never ages; the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meat-packing. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.