Krugman, partisanship, and inequality

Like Paul Krugman (see here), I am interested in inequality.

Is he missing the boat on this one? He seems to be blaming inequality for a (supposed) rise in partisanship in the US. Red state, blue state nonsense aside, I have two questions for this, in case there happen to be any Americanists reading my blog (doubt it).

First, is partisanship really on the rise? I guess I buy this, but I seem to remember reading a book by Fiorina in McIver's American Politics class that disputed this notion. True? I have a feeling that there is a rather large debate in American Political Science about this nonsense. Typically, I ignore this stuff, because it's boring, but as soon as you tie in inequality, I get interested.

Second, if partisanship is on the rise, isn't this really about the demise of the Southern wing of the democratic party, and not really about inequality?

Furthermore, if I'm right that it is mostly a story about the demise of the dixiecrats, doesn't this imply that an increase in partisanship is desirable? It doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to assume that we are (and should be) in favor of the demise of the primary political force in congress working against equal rights for African Americans.

Finally, even without the demise of the dixiecrats, isn't partisansip really desirable? Partisanship, to me, implies strong, ideologically-motivated political parties. This is, to my mind, one of the primary problems with Peruvian politics--weak parties with little or no ideology. Makes it hard for voters to know what they're voting for. Not helped by the fact that all the party names are meaningless ("Somos Peru," "Peru Posíble," "Peru Popular") or misleading ("Andean Popular Revolutionary Alliance").

Not that this matters much to me, as a newly-minted anarcho-communitarian.