Editorial: A great divide/Where does Minnesota belong?
This weekend, I went from Florida, a heavily contested battleground state, to Minnesota, also a battleground state, albeit one with fewer electoral votes. One thing I did learn was that there is a theory that puports to explain why some states lean Democratic and others Republican. Hint: it has to do with money. I know; gee, what a shock....
In the midst of the most contentious political season in memory, it's good to remind ourselves of the roles we're supposed to play. Democrats are the woolly-headed dreamers who drive foreign cars and promote lavish public spending. Republicans are the religious ones who are fiercely self-reliant and want nothing more than to get the government off their backs.
It may come as a shock to learn that people living in the so-called red states, the states that went for President Bush last time and are likely to go for him again, are being bankrolled by people living in the blue states. When you count up all the federal tax money sent to Washington, then calculate what each state gets in return, you discover a curiously divided America in which the Democratic states are subsidizing the Republican ones.
Minnesota, for example, gets only 77 cents back for every dollar sent to Washington, while North Dakota gets a whopping $2.07, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. Minnesota is one of 16 donor states. The 34 others, collectively speaking, make out like bandits. Of the 16 donor states, 12 went for Al Gore in 2000. Of the 34 recipient states, 26 went for Bush. Nearly all of these are in the South or interior West, places that preach rugged individualism while pocketing federal handouts, mostly in the form of subsidies to oil, gas, mining, logging, agriculture and the military.
Actually, the spoils enjoyed by the red states are less a matter of hypocrisy than of conservative political success. As discussed in a newly released online book called "The Great Divide," Republicans have been brilliant at convincing ordinary white people in the South and interior West to vote on cultural terms rather than for their own economic benefit. Most of the federal subsidies, for example, flow to red state residents who are already wealthy. The red states thrive, says the book, because they are "on the dole" and because they aggressively oppose anything to help blue states.
If any of y'all remember Michael Moore's old "TV Nation" television series from a few years back, he did a show on this theme. He decided to visit a strongly Republican area and determine why those who lived there were demanding that Big Government get off their backs. The place he chose was Fulton County, Georgia, which, as it turns out, is saturated with federal tax dollars. Moore spent the show exposing the hypocrisy of Republicans in Fulton County, who essentially wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They were quite happy to accept federal tax dollars while at the same time demanding that "Big Government" get out of their lives.
Fulton County is not an isolated phenomenon. Most Republican-leaning states can be described in similar terms. On the surface, it could be laid to simple hypocrisy, but I do agree that it has more to do with Republicans exploiting cultural issues. The question for Democrats is simple: what are we going to do about it? Until we can answer that simple question and provide voters with an alternative, this hypocritical political posturing will continue. Hey, it's worked for Republicans this long...you don't think they're going to change without a reason, do you?
