Leftist author Thomas Frank was on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” this morning offering a little therapy for defeated liberals. His primary point was that the Republicans perpetuate a fraud when they stir voters on cultural issues, since Republicans get elected with them but do next to nothing about them, and are more interested in a Wall Street agenda. Frank, as a theorist of populism, thinks the rubes are being exploited by the New York elites to elect Bush to get privatized Social Security, and who cares about abortion? As proof, he cited that President Bush’s declared at his post-election news conference that we was interested in Social Security and tax reform, but didn’t talk about his social-issue priorities as boldly.
Frank unraveled this grand theory on TV today that the pro-life movement has directed its fury not at abortion clinic operators, but at judicial activists, which allows them to sway the Red Staters with talk of pointy-headed Eastern elites telling you how to live (or in this case, might I add, how to kill). He told viewers it was important to recognize the deep-seated anti-intellectualism of the pro-life forces. This, I suspect, might come as a bit of a surprise to Professor Robert George and other theoreticians of a culture and philosophy of life.
Need I mention that there does seem to be a movement afoot to prove that pro-life voters are not to be taken for granted in the post-election aftermath?