[O]n Page 14 of Homegrown Democrat: a Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America ... Keillor makes reference to "a gang of pirates." On the very next page he lambastes the Republican Party's "hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, see-through fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, hobby cops, misanthropic frat boys, lizardskin cigar monkeys, jerktown romeos, ninja dittoheads, the shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, cheese merchants, cat stranglers, taxi dancers, grab-ass executives, gun fetishists, genteel pornographers, pill pushers, chronic nappers, nihilists in golf pants, backed-up Baptists, Crips and Bloods of the boardroom" and so on, including "their Etch-a-Sketch president with a voice like a dial tone, who for almost four years has looked as if he were about to say something smart ..."

And the man's just getting started.

As a rallying cry to the troops, Homegrown Democrat is an Above Average tub-thumper, but as a carrot of sweet reason to entice reluctant horses into the barn, it just will not do. And that is a pity. For there is much to commend in this book, much that might have won the admiration of even rock-ribbed conservatives had its author not buried them in so much wet dirt.