The usual mantras of the America's two major political parties are as follows: Republicans want a smaller, less intrusive government and Democrats want a bigger, more helpful government. These generalizations hold even more true when you look at rhetoric, especially economic rhetoric. But apparently it doesn't exactly
hold up to the real world:
That is a map of the United States where red states represent those that get more from the federal government than they give. Blue states are the opposite. Now here's a map of the 2008 presidential election:
Apparently both red and blue states act politically opposite of their economic interests.
Fair point, but your characterization of the Dems and Reps is also a little simplified: Republicans, for instance, tend to be in favor of BIG government when it comes to the military, domestic and foreign surveillance, law enforcement, the judicial system (where they tend to support longer/harsher sentencing for crimes), and sometimes social issues as well. (In other words, all the things the Founders were especially worried about. Ironic, that.) A lot of "blue" red states might be getting their money from those sources, though, so it's not necessarily a matter of people acting opposite their interests, so much as it's a matter of people abandoning their stated principles whenever it suits them.
ReplyDeleteBack in the 90s, Michael Moore did a TV piece where he discovered that Cobb County, GA (represented at the time by Newt Gingrich and Bob Barr) received more federal dollars than any other county in America. So he did this funny bit where he went down and walked into public libraries, highway on-ramps, etc, trying to get people to stop using government programs. Which was all well and good, except all those federal dollars going to Cobb County were actually going to Lockheed Martin (defense spending), which Gingrich and Barr had never made any pretense of opposing. Kinda hurts his argument that way.
Of course it's a generalization, but like I said, I think that is mostly the message of their rhetoric.
ReplyDeleteInteresting story about Cobb County.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: red state blue state is bullshit.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you need read this article: What if political scientists covered the news?
ReplyDeleteGreat article. Maybe I should clarify a bit. Generalizing what millions and millions of people believe according to whether their state was "red" or "blue" in the last election is meaningless. Most Americans are moderates, the "party line" doesn't exist for either party, if it did no one would agree with it, and there is no state whose population is in lock step. This is only a few of the reasons why it is meaningless and unhelpful to use "red state blue state" to describe anything other than which candidate got a state's electoral votes in a presidential election.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I agree saying a state has 51% of voters in one party is mostly not helpful, it's does give you some information. Perhaps we should just use more detail: How about light red, dark red, light blue, dark blue?
ReplyDeleteMaybe because the Red States give their funding to the people and the blue states give their funding to special interest groups like Solyndra.
ReplyDeleteIt's good to see that Reconstruction is still killing the South.
ReplyDelete