But it isn't just the Republican Religious Radicals that Patterson takes on through his fictional alter-ego. He also takes "conservatives" to task, chiding them through Grace's announcement speech: "It is not conservative to turn one group of Americans against another ... to saddle our children with debt ... to despoil the environment ... to squander our soldiers' lives ..." [p145]
It may be a good thing that The Race is fiction, for reality is so very different. When a Republican strays off the corporate reservation even a fraction as much as Grace does, strange things begin to happen, secrets are revealed and others created, until he meekly slips back across the boundary and again dons the party's leash and collar to end the scurrilous attacks waged against him. This isn't just a Republican trait, as the recent tale of the attempted censure of DINO Senator Dianne Feinstein at the California Democratic State Convention reveals.
But reality doesn't lessen the power of Patterson's fictionalized outrage, for the words he created for Corey Grace should be words we all should heed. For once, thanks to the subscription by Henry Holt & Co., one can actually hear these words spoken.
As too many people in this country no longer read, it may be the only chance too many people will have to hear Patterson's call for a more reasonable discourse intended to bring about a new politics to truly face the nation's problems. These staged stump speeches of the fictional Corey Grace may well induce thought in enough people -- which I know to be already happening through my conversations with my Good Orange County (CA) Republican teammates (GOC(CA)RTs) -- to cause honest reflection over the path the nation should take.
If such should happen, then the answer posed above would be answered thusly: Only when the electorate is itself honest.
If The Race can help to change the course of the nation, then I believe that Patterson will have achieved his goal in writing this book - and I will tip my titanium tam o'shanter to him in tribute.
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