Praeger Elephant's Edge: The Republicans as a Ruling Party

The Republican Party currently enjoys an edge. The advantage can be seen in Congress, state politics, judicial rulings, foreign and domestic policy, party finances, the media, public attitudes, and economic and demographic developments. Yet the Republicans do not seem capable of translating this into a durable electoral majority. Conditions now exist within American politics that will facilitate the establishment of Republican rule. Many of these conditions have ripened during the past decade. They include rules governing elections and campaign finance, shifts in core political values among the public that are consistent with Republican philosophy, and fundamental social and economic changes in American society that are likely to increase the ranks of Republican voters. The author explains in lucid, engaging terms how Republicans have taken control of both houses of Congress and experienced a remarkable resurgence at the state level. He explores how conservatives are utilizing the courts to simultaneously move policy rightward and mobilize sympathetic parts of the electorate. He also examines social and economic changes to show how racial politics, religiosity, and the nature of work and wealth benefit today's Republican Party. Republican rule should not be confused with Republican realignment. These conditions will advantage Republicans in future elections and bring about consistent Republican control of government at all levels―federal, state, and local, executive, legislative, and judicial. However, current conditions do not guarantee the kind of enduring Republican majority many journalists and strategists have predicted. Taylor explains the factors that will prohibit the Republicans from fully exploiting their advantages and dominating American politics the way the Democrats did in the 30 years following the New Deal. These factors include internal and intractable tensions within the Republican Party, the parties' sophisticated political information gathering strategies, and the innate risk aversion of the campaign industry. Review Elephant's Edge: The Republicans as a Ruling Party is a very good exploration of the current Republican hegemony in American politics, from the White House to Congress to the federal courts to state houses across the country....This book is especially good in the sense that Taylor seamlessly brings together academic scholarship and journalistic accounts (and opinions) to draw a crisply constructed diagram of how the Republicans have succeeded so well in a relatively short period of time....Whatever one's political stripe, s/he will find this book to be highly informative and engaging, most especially those of us who are very keen to see whether the electoral landscape changes in both 2006 and 2008 elections.-- " Political Science Quarterly" The operative word in this book's title is edge because Taylor says that the Republicans have the political advantage but do not have the appeal to become the long-term majority party. In this excellent investigation into the state of the Republican Party, he credits Newt Gingrich for the deft organizational skills that led to the Republican resurgence with the takeover of the House after decades of Democratic control. The Republicans maintain their edge, in no small part, through pork-barrel politics and redistricting, tactics that Republicans complained about when the Democrats did the same. The author shows that the edge has been bolstered by Bush's post-9/11 foreign policy (despite failings of the Iraq war), the increasing conservative judicial rulings of all courts, and small-government, low-tax policies. Despite this, Taylor concludes that the Republican Party will not achieve the dominance for which it aims because of the flexibility of the Democratic Party to adapt to its constituents' needs, the deteriorating conditions in Iraq, and growing fissures in an overconfident Republican Party. Highly recommended for public and