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58 of 59 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
...but maybe they should. Kevin Phillips' 1969 classic, The Emerging Republican Majority, remains the most concise and dependable guide to historical voting trends in the United States in the 20th century. The book itself is notorious for urging that Republicans pursue a "Southern strategy" and abandon the liberal establishmentarian constituencies in the northeast that had previously held sway over the party, but its real value is in the rich historical background Phillips provides. Phillips can be said to have been successful in spotting a realignment that was then very recent (first manifesting itself in 1964) and proclaiming its continuation well into the future. Other tectonic shifts in American politics have not proven so long-lasting. In many ways, the Eisenhower coalition of 1952 and 1956 seemed more formidable than the coalition Phillips describes, but it could not be sustained without the former General's personal appeal. More recently, one also recalls Arthur Schlesinger's 1992 prediction that Bill Clinton's election augured the beginning of a new 30-year cycle of liberal governance, a hope which would be dashed by the Republican takeover of Congress 24 months later.
Above all, what I learned from The Emerging Republican Majority is that most shifts in voting behavior from election to election really do have rational explanations rooted in policy and in the candidates' important personal traits. Those who have been able to anticipate these coming shifts have a distinct advantage in winning elections.
Phillips seeks to why certain voting blocs, say, ancestrally German counties in Wisconsin, or Irish Catholic neighborhoods in New York City show unusual Democratic strength in one election while other areas of the country turn in an unusually depressed Democratic vote when compared to four years earlier. What Phillips finds is that these shifts are no fluke. The Catholicism of Democrat Al Smith in 1928 (and of course, of John F. Kennedy in 1960) led to unprecedented Democratic majorities among Catholics. The electoral revolt of German counties in the Midwest against FDR in 1940 was a direct reaction to FDR's desire to contain Nazi aggression, and continued into the war election of 1944. As America moved Westward in the last century, people took their voting behaviors with them, and this is evident in how the Yankee-settled Pacific Northwest behaved compared to the largely Midwestern suburban tracts of Southern California. These sociological realities are readily apparent in election returns. With nearly 200 charts and maps, The Emerging Republican Majority is a book that's unusually full of such historically revealing facts.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
By K.A.Goldberg
Format:Hardcover
Kevin Phillips wrote this perceptive book about U.S. politics and a rising conservative trend right after the 1968 Presidential Election. Phillips notes that Richard Nixon's razor-thin (44-43%) victory over Democrat Hubert Humphrey that year was more conservative than realized once you factor the 13% that went to George Wallace. Phillips suggests that his Republican party cast off its remaining northeastern liberalism and court southern whites. Such policy alienated many liberals and blacks, and seemed semi-racist even to moderates. Still, it's effectiveness is apparent. Southern whites have helped the GOP win seven of the last ten Presidential elections. From 1968-2004 no Democrat other than southerners Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton has won a single electoral vote in the deep south (or reached the White House). The lasting effectiveness of Phillip's strategy shows in the close elections of 2000 and 2004. Nearly 70% of white voters in the South and Border states supported George W. Bush over Al Gore and John Kerry, helping Bush sweep the region's 15 states and 179 (2000) or 184 (2004) electoral votes.
Author Kevin Phillips is a former Nixon staffer and current radio/tv commentator who left the Republican fold in disgust for the Party's adherence to war, oil, and the religious right. Whatever your politics, you can learn from his perceptive if slightly thick prose. Readers might also enjoy his recent book AMERICAN THEOCRACY.
Author Kevin Phillips is a former Nixon staffer and current radio/tv commentator who left the Republican fold in disgust for the Party's adherence to war, oil, and the religious right. Whatever your politics, you can learn from his perceptive if slightly thick prose. Readers might also enjoy his recent book AMERICAN THEOCRACY.
Format:Hardcover
Kevin Phillips has written a good dozen books built (at least to some extent) on the thesis he set forth for the first time in =TERM= well over 40 years ago. =American Theocracy= may be the apotheosis of that thesis, but it also appears in his newest, =1775=, and his terrific -- of somewhat overkilling -- examination of the English and American civil wars, =The Cousins' Wars=.
So what's the thesis: That American politics is controlled by religious beliefs because the people who vote and get involved tend to be... religious. (In =both= political parties.) They do so because they are rule-observant and dutiful. He cites voluminous demographic research to give credence to his assertions that...
1) specific ethno-religious groups have long held beliefs, values, idea(l)s, attitudes, principles, assumptions, convictions and doctrines (e.g.: against abortion, against gay marriage, male dominance / female subordination) that could be the grist for effective appeals by those who understood those religious convictions; and
2) specific appeals could be designed, tested for effectiveness, fine-tuned, and then widely communicated to those religious target audiences.
Karl Rove did precisely this in the '90s and '00s, but Phillips had himself played these cards for Nixon in '68 and '72. Republican strategists ever since have done so... but Democratic operatives like James Carville, Terry McAullife and Rahm Emmanuel did likewise in an even more fine-tuned fashion for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama with just =enough= success where it mattered to knock the Republicans out of the box in a few, key "swing" states.
What was "playing the religious racist card" in the Nixon era is now (far more euphemistically) called "values politics." And with the advent of computer analysis of voter demographics -- including religious affiliation and church membership county-by-county -- narrowly targeted, relatively extreme appeals can be communicated to some neighborhoods without ever being noticed in others where those same appeals would be negatively appraised.
Phillips's book is an oft-cited classic, and should be read in at least Cliff's Notes form by all aspiring political scientists.
So what's the thesis: That American politics is controlled by religious beliefs because the people who vote and get involved tend to be... religious. (In =both= political parties.) They do so because they are rule-observant and dutiful. He cites voluminous demographic research to give credence to his assertions that...
1) specific ethno-religious groups have long held beliefs, values, idea(l)s, attitudes, principles, assumptions, convictions and doctrines (e.g.: against abortion, against gay marriage, male dominance / female subordination) that could be the grist for effective appeals by those who understood those religious convictions; and
2) specific appeals could be designed, tested for effectiveness, fine-tuned, and then widely communicated to those religious target audiences.
Karl Rove did precisely this in the '90s and '00s, but Phillips had himself played these cards for Nixon in '68 and '72. Republican strategists ever since have done so... but Democratic operatives like James Carville, Terry McAullife and Rahm Emmanuel did likewise in an even more fine-tuned fashion for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama with just =enough= success where it mattered to knock the Republicans out of the box in a few, key "swing" states.
What was "playing the religious racist card" in the Nixon era is now (far more euphemistically) called "values politics." And with the advent of computer analysis of voter demographics -- including religious affiliation and church membership county-by-county -- narrowly targeted, relatively extreme appeals can be communicated to some neighborhoods without ever being noticed in others where those same appeals would be negatively appraised.
Phillips's book is an oft-cited classic, and should be read in at least Cliff's Notes form by all aspiring political scientists.
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