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The GOP scam is getting worse — for Republican voters. A new study shows how.
Unless the red/rural dynamic changes so that these states have a viable path forward to greater economic success, they will probably remain under the thumb of conservative politicians who have no interest in altering the current dynamic.
To prolong their political longevity, GOP politicians don't want their poor rural red states becoming more blue and affluent.
3/8/21
When every Senate Republican voted against President Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue package over the weekend, it revived a question that analysts have asked about the modern GOP for decades: Why do so many conservative Americans vote against their own economic interests? A new analysis by three leading political scientists theorizes this question in a fresh way: by comprehensively analyzing the political economy of red states, relative to that of blue ones. In so doing, they have captured some striking truths about this political moment. Its key finding: We’re in the grip of a paradox. Even as areas that vote Republican continue falling behind blue America economically — helping widen those oft-discussed regional inequalities between cosmopolitan and outlying areas — GOP elites everywhere are growing more committed to an increasingly uniform and regressive agenda that does little to address the problem. “Red America is falling farther behind, but the politicians who represent it at all levels have gotten more unified on an economic agenda that hurts the people who live there,” Jacob Hacker, the Yale political scientist who co-authored the analysis, told me. The $1.9 trillion package includes large stimulus checks to most individuals, extended unemployment benefits, a big infusion of aid to state governments, and a new child cash allowance that could cut childhood poverty in half.
“Blue America is increasingly buoyed by the knowledge economy,” the analysis concludes, while “red America is struggling to find a viable growth model for the twenty-first century.” How did this happen? A big part of the problem, the authors argue, is conservative governance. The analysis looks at the political economy of 26 states that voted Republican in presidential elections three times since 2000. Of those, 21 are what the authors call “low road states.” The “low road states” still labor under the legacies of “conservative governance,” which include lower minimum wages, anti-union policies, and underfunded education and infrastructure. The ultimate paradox here may be this. As the analysis concludes, GOP political elites are able to continue insulating themselves from accountability for this disconnect, not just “through identity appeals rooted in racial and cultural backlash,” but also because of the bias “of the American electoral system toward nonurban areas.” “Republicans enjoy a huge advantage because the Senate over-weights rural areas and because Democratic voters are packed into urban areas, which is made worse by gerrymandering,” Hacker told me. “The tragic irony is that this huge rural bias also helps Republicans get away with ignoring the economic needs of their own constituents.”
Unless the red/rural dynamic changes so that these states have a viable path forward to greater economic success, they will probably remain under the thumb of conservative politicians who have no interest in altering the current dynamic.
To prolong their political longevity, GOP politicians don't want their poor rural red states becoming more blue and affluent.