Hill No Longer Overlooks Suburbs

Columnist Morton Kondracke tracks the rise of the GOP's "Suburban Agenda," a legislative package spearheaded by Illinois Republican congressman Mark Kirk. Kirk's essential insight is that congressional Democrats are focused on city voters, whether the uptown elite or the downtown minorities, while the conservative Republican ascendancy is based in the rural South; the great mass of suburban voters, Kirk says, are there to be claimed by the party that addresses their concerns about school safety (the first bill to pass in the agenda was a background check on public school new hires), college costs, and preservation of open spaces. That these voters have already been the focus of the past several electoral seasons as "soccer moms" and "soccer dads" seems to go unnoticed, but we've been following the progress of the Suburban Agenda and will continue to do so.