This book was published just before the 2006 election and I'm re-reading it in January 2013 to see how well Schaller's analysis and prescriptions hold up in hindsight. Short answer: amazingly well. Early 2006 was a high point in Republican fortunes and even though there were emerging indications of trouble to come (see Schiavo, Terri), most observers seemed to be settling in to a new normal, hopefully or with dread as the case may be.
The Republicans had captured the nation and the South had captured the Republican Party - President George W Bush, Senate majority leader Bill Frist, and House majority leader Tom "The Hammer" Delay. Bush ruled as a Southern oligarch of old, Frist aspired to the top office, and Delay menaced "activist" federal judges with impeachment, all now fallen from grace and almost from memory. At one point George W Bush is described as the first Southern conservative elected president since Polk in 1844, and 2006 seems almost that long ago, so quickly have things changed, and in the direction Schaller has laid out.
His main thesis is that the South is solidly and increasingly Republican and that there is no point in Democrats mollifying those neo-Confederate voters. They are dead to the message and appeasement serves only to annoy reachable voters in other parts of the country. Better to craft a message resonating with an emergent majority in the rest of the country.
In a stunning chart on page 167, he divides the states into three columns based on their choice for president in 2004: Democratic-leaning (over 5% margin), competitive, and Republican-leaning (over 5% margin). Obama carried the first two columns both times and several states in the Republican column (Virginia twice). If anything, he has understated the pace of change. Without doubt, he identified its direction and from an early vantage point, just as it was starting to emerge. That is all you can expect from a political analyst, rare though it is.
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