Voting to Kill

Book excerpt: In Voting to Kill, author Jim Geraghty offers a comprehensive look at why recent elections have given the Republican Party its greatest political success since the 1920s. Despite a lot of talk about values, problems within the GOP, "red state culture," and the slow but vital progress in Iraq, the biggest difference between the two parties remains the subject of safety. As the Democrats continue to project an image of confusion and pacifism, even in the face of increasingly vicious terrorist activity in the Middle East, more Americans trust the GOP to be ruthless in killing terrorists. From "security moms" to neo-Jacksonian bloggers, people across the country are confronting the post-9/11 era with white-knuckle anger and relentless determination. Voting to Kill captures this zeitgeist, showing why terrorism was the defining issue in 2002 and 2004, and will be in 2006 and 2008, as Republicans rev up instinctively hawkish Americans to vote and campaign as if their lives depend on it.