Wayne Thorburn, the author of Red State: An Insider’s Story of How the GOP Came to Dominate Texas formerly served as an executive director in the Republican Party of Texas. He was an appointee in the departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development at the time of Ronald Reagan and Georg H. w. Bush administrations. He also is the author of a history of the Young Americans for Freedom political organization. Wayne Thorburn is qualified to explain how a solidly one-party Democratic state has transformed to become a Republican stronghold. As an insider in the Republican Party and as a political scientist he is equipped to show how the changes have caused the different stages of party competition in Texas resulting in the shift from the Democraticto Republican governance.
Wayne Thorburn also served as a former activist in the Young Americans for Freedom. He served as the state GOP executive director between the year 1977 and 1983. This gives him an upper hand in indirectly describing the period when he was actively involved in the party politics. The book jacket provides an intriguing perspective on the issue of the inevitability of GOP's reign in Texas. It depicts the book as one with an immense wealth of data on the historical trends and tendencies in the Texas elections and voting behavior. Wayne used the Red State to analyze how a solidly Democratic state has become a Republican stronghold without changing their perspectives on ideology and without changing their public policy orientation.
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The main reason for Thorburn to the write the book is to bring a lifetime of his political involvement to the task of tracing back the transformation of Texas politics since 1960. Red State majors on why the transformation took place as well as their implications on the future. Thorburn uses Red State to bring about issues of the Texan political culture. He uses political culture to allude to the underlying attitudes, the beliefs, and assumptions as well as the expectations that are held onto by individuals within a country or state. According to this, describing the political culture of a given area involves describing how the people in it view politics, their expectations on the government and whether they are active in deciding government policies. Traditionally, Texas was a Democratic stronghold, and Republicanism became dominant first after the Civil war. Red State is based on recognition of the distinctive views of government and politics.
In November 1960, it was the Democratic Party that dominated Texas and the newly elected vice president, Lyndon Johnson was a Texan. All the thirty elective positions were held by Democrats statewide. The state legislature was only made up of 181 democrats with no Republicans or any other people apart from the Democrats. Five centuries later, Red State depicts how there was a paradigm shift, and Texas had not voted for a democratic president between 1976 and 2010 (Thorburn, 2014) . As Thorburn was writing, every statewide elective office was held by Republicans. In Washington, Texas is represented by a congressional delegation made up of twenty-five Republicans and nine Democrats.
Red State further champions for its agenda by showing how the Texas Senate is controlled by Republicans by a nineteen to twelve margin as well as the Texas House of Representatives by a 101 to 49 margin. The book also goes on to explore why there was a major transformation of the Texas politics. Red State also tackles the implication of these changes in the Texan future politics on the future. Thorburn analysis of the wealth of data he alludes to is an effective way of showing how the changes in the state’s demographics have primarily moved Texas through three stages of party competition. The state’s demographic changes such influx of new residents, the rural to urban migration and the enormous growth of the Mexican American Population have all had significant effects on the political shifts. The stages in party competition have involved a shift from two-pierced politics to a two-party competition between the Democrats and the Republicans and then back to one-party dominance facilitated by the Republicans.
In Red State, Wayne Thorburn captures his findings to show that the shift from Democratic to Republican governance has not been as a result of any changes in the ideological perspectives or the public policy orientation held onto by the Texan people, but, on the contrary, he shows that at the time when the Texan people were voting for the Democrat, there were fewer liberals or moderates and the conservatives outnumbered them all. He backs this up with the fact that the Republican Party increased their identification with the conservatives from back in 1960. The GOP’s rise was inevitable according to Thorburn, due to the inherent characteristics as well as the ideological preferences of the state’s citizens. Red State presents that the party is bound to maintain the dominance for quite some time. The book captures interesting information on the primary participation rates and the electoral history of different population centers.
Capturing on the formalities of the Texan Republicans in the era between 1979 and 1983 is an efficient way of showing the interesting aspects of GOP. Wayne Thorburn gives an instance of how units of young members of GOP would meet at an annual retreat near Brenham, and they called it “Camp Wannameetagop.” Thorburn presents an enticing vision of young Kay Bailey Hutchison, Tom Delay, and Joe Stratus II all playing volleyball together during the declining years of the Carter administration.
What I find not well augured in the book is its expansive time frame that is from Texas Independence to 2014 which makes it loose on necessary captivation. The effect of this is that Red State may make a reader only reflect and dwell on the narrowing scope of a political vision. Currently, most political commentary dwells on questions of probability and the fundamental of politics are based on what can be measured. I believe this angle depicts the lowered expectations of the country’s political life with continued bleaching out of personalities and greatly reduced unexpected occurrences and happenings.
The major focus on the fundamental inevitability in Red State has a way of obscuring the bigger picture. Thorburn uses his book to chart the slow but sure rise of the GOP accompanying this by the great numerical details. The journey seems only to be headed towards ascertaining that now Texas is a Republican-dominant state and has pockets of strong Democratic support. The statistical approach to politics does not necessarily produce wrong results and answers, but its focus has a way of preventing any other details to be covered. A variation of Thorburn's argument seems to be that the fundamentals are immensely stacked against a Democratic revival. The people that hold onto this variation argue that investing in Texas would be a waste of time and money. Other states have more extreme voting lines as compared to Texas in the presidential elections. States like Alabama and Montana elect Democrats to state office, and it is, therefore, likely that there are significant changes in perceptions. There is more to the politics in Texas than the GOP’s rise, things like the Democrats’ decline and slow fade; such aspects would greatly incorporate political science in the presentation of facts.
References
Thorburn, W. J. (2014). Red State: An Insider's Story of how the GOP came to Dominate Texas Politics. Austin: University of Texas Press.
