Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Red Votes and Blue Votes

I was watching a pair of talking heads discuss and debate this year's Electoral College math and as I looked at the colors on the map behind them something occurred to me. 

A reliably blue State will invariably send two liberal Democrat senators to Washington, but, from time to time anyway, they will also elect a Republican as governor.  The reverse, however, almost never happens.  (Does it ever happen?)  That is, a red state's governor, just like its senators, will almost surely be a conservative Republican.  Both offices face the same electorate, so why the ideological inconsistency among Democrats?

Easy.  Liberal senators are dispatched to the nation's capital by their constituencies with understood orders to confiscate as much of other people's money as possible.  Governors, by contrast, are elected to secure, or at least not squander their own.  On that score, conservatives have a much better record. 

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