Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and the Drive for Permanent Power Book

I read this book a few years ago ' when Obama was president ' and thought it merely good. Back then I took Edsall's worries about the GOP having a permanent electoral advantage to be a tad hyperbolic, not fully justified. He writes in the Preface:
The GOP has succeeded in institutionalizing a powerful, well-funded, durable infrastructure protecting conservative legislation and regulatory policies to secure ground it has gained, even when Democrats intermittently wrest control of one or more of the branches of government.
Now I've read this book again and I still think Edsall's worries are sometimes hyberbolic. But maybe he's right and I'm wrong. He marshals many facts & figures to support his claims about broad cultural changes seeping through society and electoral outcomes'most of which might strike the general readers as 'insider baseball,' but strike me as very interesting, maybe worrisome, too. Given that this was published in August 2006, some of his analysis back then now strike me as spot-on, prescient.

This is a good book. Maybe my enthusiasm for it is itself hyperbolic. But maybe Edsall's identified something permanent & hard about our country's future. I'll have to reread this in the future to see if, with the benefit of hindsight, his analysis in 2006 has proven true.

I love Edsall. Read the stuff of his future books here.