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Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches.

Article Excerpt
Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches by Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 2006. ISBN-10:0 262 13464 0; ISBN-13:978 262 13464 4, $35.00. 252 pages.

As the punditocracy has frequently observed, and gleefully hyped at times, politics has become more partisan over the last three decades, in particular, since the disputed Presidential election of 2000. Gone are the halcyon days when Republicans and Democrats would square off over important policy questions in the halls of Congress, and later meet at their favorite watering holes to quaff brandies and smoke cigars. The electorate as well seems hopelessly divided into a broad swath of "red states" across the Southern and Western United States, a few "blue states" clustered in the Northeast and along the "left coast," leaving only a few hotly contested "purple" states to receive all the attention once every four years.

Now three respected political scientists have offered a compelling thesis to explain these heightened political divisions...

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