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I confess, I haven't read What's the Matter with Kansas. As a former Kansan with aspirations of covering some aspects of political life, it's an inexplicable oversight. So prefaced by that disclaimer, I have through sheer osmosis picked up what the basic gist of it is, and this discussion on it led by its author today is interesting, mostly for Tom Frank's reasons for focusing on that subject, that social geography. I will say that my own observation upon periodic returns to Kansas is that Kansans don't vote Republican for economic reasons, but for the culture-war stuff, and that the transformation from moderate conservatism (think Nancy Landon Kassebaum, or her father, even Bob Dole) to ultra conservatism (think Sam Brownback or Pat Roberts) Frank writes of is not explained by economics. I think the phenonemon has more to do with the growing political organizing and involvement and savvy of the Christian far right, in particular in the Bible Belt, over the past fifteen years than anything else. A transformation Kansas has experienced in a big way. In short, the Christian far right very savvily runs someone for every single vacant seat, every primary, dog catcher, school board, you name it, again and again, whereas nobody I know from high school in moderate Johnson County is running for anything. [One person I know ran for Congress from Kansas City, Missouri, but that is a totally different ballgame politically, urban and Democratic.] One demonstration that the change is about 'values' issues is the recent cases that have seized Kansas since Christian conservatives won majorities in various state bodies, including the decision of the Kansas school board voting, twice now, to not require the teaching of evolution in the schools, a new proposal that would ban gay people from adopting, and other such imposition of religious values on public life. What's the matter with Kansas? It's a story of what's the matter with moderates not paying attention to the political organizing of the Christian right. One group that is doing work trying to mobilize Kansas moderates including church groups to promote tolerance and become more politically engaged as the far Christian right is the Mainstream Coalition...
Update: The corollary to my observations is that economic issues are neither the cause nor the solution to Kansans' representation by increasingly Christian conservative politicians. I think the answer is actually engaging and mobilizing Kansas' silent majority of moderate conservatives, and that the place for that largely to be played out is in (mostly Republican) primaries.