Why do more people vote Republican these days?

Via Atrios I came across a New Republic review of the book Off Center. According to the reviewer,

There is a strong conventional wisdom running through political punditry which holds that the system does what the people want. If one political party is winning, then it must be because they reflect majority opinion, and/or the other party is just screwing up.

Political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson have written a book called Off-Center that powerfully challenges this conventional wisdom. Hacker and Pierson show that public opinion has not moved rightward over the last two decades, and that the Republican Party has had to go to extraordinary lengths to hide its unpopular domestic agenda from the public.

I guess this view is easy to buy into if you want to believe that the Democrats are right about everything.

But I say that the real reason the Repubs have pulled ahead is because there has been a Christian revival, and the Christians have aligned themselves with the Republican party because the Democratic party is anti-abortion. It's a one issue alignment.

This alliance has brought new voters into the Republican party, but it has also had the effect of moving the Republican party towards pro-Christian positions and at the same time has moved Christians towards favoring certain positions endorsed by the rich elite who run the country, such as abolishing the estate tax.

Comments

[Chuck]

Maybe it's more of a fundamental revival than a Christian one. Don't lump all Christians in one monolithic group. We are as diverse as the nation.

Quite frankly, the longer this war and the clusterf**k of Katrina wear on, the more true Christians will flee from the Republicans. It's all great to spout off "trickle down" economics, it's another thing to leave people stranded to die on national television because they couldn't leave town.

Of course, when the media only focuses on a couple of mouth breathers its hard to hear the more progressive side which is busy giving food to the poor and building homes instead of picketting Target.

[Adorable Girlfriend]

The media has no interest in that group. That would make them liberals again and the in-vogue thing is to dis on that.