Let’s Look at the Issues
This week a Tea Party favorite named Dan Patrick won a Republican primary race in Texas for the position of Lieutenant Governor. In his victory speech he said that Tea Party people love the Second Amendment. He said this right after another madman had killed six innocent people in Santa Barbara, California, in still another episode of senseless gun violence.
During the primary campaign Patrick espoused other Tea Party and red state causes. Yes, he is a strong proponent of the death penalty. It’s just another reminder of how some politicians, particularly those who have no idea how to reduce crime, peddle the death penalty as a deterrent, allowing them to position themselves to the electorate as “tough on crime.” But the indisputable fact that is obscured by all the bluster about capital punishment is that the homicide rate is often much lower in states that don’t allow the death penalty! Patrick’s victory also reminds us that Texas, a state as red as any state can get, leads the country in executions and allows citizens to carry concealed weapons “to protect themselves.” Texas also has one of the highest and fastest-growing homicide rates in the U.S., while a blue state like New York, which has stricter gun safety laws and no death penalty, has seen a strong decline in both homicides and crime in general. Those are the facts.
People in red states often cite “moral issues” as an area where they differ with residents of the blue states. Many red state residents say “moral values” and/or “family values” are important factors in determining their vote. It is a reminder that these same states embraced George W. Bush’s political posturing in favor of a constitutional ban on gay marriage. After Bush turned the largest federal budget surplus in history into the largest budget deficit ever, after he went to war for clearly phony reasons and after his administration oversaw the largest loss of jobs in U.S. history, red state voters apparently still saw gay marriage as one of the greatest threats facing America.
And while many more blue state residents support gay marriage, even more of them find it amazing that this issue was a deciding factor for many red state voters to vote for Mr. Bush not once but twice.
The majority of red states also continue to interfere with a woman’s right to choose, passing legislation that closes women’s health clinics or forces unwanted probes of their bodies. It is indeed astounding. Because while red state residents preach moral values and family values and the need to defend these ideals by defending traditional marriage, it is the blue states that have the lowest divorce rates in the nation. Yes, it’s true. Seventeen out of the 20 states with the lowest divorce rates in the country are blue states. Texas, on the other hand, has one of the highest divorce rates in the country.
Tea Party favorites also continue to demand tax cuts. But many blue state residents firmly believe that it was the Bush tax cuts that killed the Bill Clinton economy, which was the largest and longest post-war economic expansion in our nation’s history. The fact that 90 percent of the Bush tax cuts went to the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans doesn’t seem to matter to many Tea Party voters, even though it has been firmly established that many conservative operations, including the Tea Party itself, are largely funded by the billionaire Koch brothers.
It should also be pointed out that those tax-hating red states pay a disproportionately lower share of federal taxes than the blue states. Another fact is that most red states receive far more in federal spending than their residents pay out in federal taxes. Blue states, on the other hand, generally pay far more in federal taxes than they receive back in federal spending. For people that hate taxes, the red state voters are making out like bandits.
There are other differences between red states and blue states, including in the areas of spending on health and education. Yes, the blue states consistently spend more money on their schools, medical facilities and health programs than Tea Party red states.
Finally, we should point out the biggest contrast of all between red and blue states: the difference between states with the highest percentage of union membership and the lowest percentage of union membership. Once again, the Tea Party red states lag in this area, having much smaller percentages in union membership than traditional blue states. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, this clearly translates into workers in red states having lower average wages, fewer pensions and more families without health coverage. It’s just another reason why it is so important for union workers in blue states like New York to make sure that union density remains strong!
