KUER Local News
Latte Liberals and Heartland Conservatives
(2005-04-29)
SANTA MONICA, CA
(KCRW) -
Last year, Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire beat Republican Dino Rossi by 129 votes. The results are still being hotly contested. Democratic US Senator Maria Cantwell was elected by just 2000 votes. Razor-thin margins like those make the state a classic example of America's polarization between the Red and the Blue, and the urban and the rural. How did America get that way? What happened to the radical populism that once held sway in the heartland? How did libertarians and religious conservatives find common ground? Have new social priorities led many people to vote against their economic self-interest?
A liberal Republican, Ralph Monroe is a former Secretary of State in Washington. Thomas Frank is Founding Editor of The Baffler magazine and the author of What's the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. Marc Hetherington is Associate Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University and the author of Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American Liberalism. Richard Cizik is Vice President of Governmental Affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella organization of 51 denominations with 30 million members in the US.
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