What was that?

Before we get too far from the political earthquake that shook the nation last week, I wanted to address the issue of why Massachusetts, California, and New York decided to go in one direction (to the Democrats), while everybody else in the country decided to go in the other direction (to the Republicans). Although MA saw a small tremor from the earthquake, in that the number of State Reps to Beacon Hill doubled, an entire ticket of very well qualified Republicans went down to defeat. From Governor to Auditor, from US Congressman to State Senators to Attorney General, MA voters seemed to reject the Republican messaged en mass. The mess that is Washington, the mess that is MA finance, did not reverberate here the way it did in the rest of the country. The question is, why?

This is not the first election the MA has swerved liberal while everyone else swerved conservative. For many years I have had a theory on why this is so: with every election that puts looney lefties in office in MA, non-looney people move out of the state. So for the next election, there are even less Republicans, and the state goes more looney. This theory hit me first in 2004, when many highly qualified challengers went down to defeat (Jim Coffey comes to mind). After that election, a surprisingly large number of the activists who had fought the good battle up and left. Many for North Carolina, a few to Texas.

But looking at the results of this election, I think the dynamic is broader. It’s not that California and Massachusetts are losing Republicans, but rather they are losing the middle class. Here’s what is left: very high-earning voters who do not care what their taxes are, and very low-earning voters who are more than willing to vote for the taxes that re-distribute wealth from the high and middle income to the low income. The only voter that gets squeezed is the middle class, for whom the high taxes ARE a problem.

Add to the high/low earning voter dynamic the public unions, and there is a perfect combination of interests to continue voting Democrats into office. And this dynamic would not even be a problem – tax the rich, feed the poor, let the middle class move out, more power to the public employees unions – EXCEPT that the taxes on the rich are not enough to pay for everything else. As the tax rates go up an up chasing more revenue, the number of people who fall into the ‘it is time to move’ category moves up as well. Eventually the highly-indebted states will default on their municipal bonds, and the entire house of cards will come crashing down. The only hope California and Massachusetts had was for Democrats to continue to hold the power in the US Congress, and could re-direct federal taxes (from the well-managed states) to the fiscal basket cases such as CA, NY and MA. Clearly the results of the last election would seem to indicate that the federal spigot is likely to be shut down.

So is it hopeless for Republicans in Massachusetts? Not necessarily. The wacky liberals are never going to ‘get it’, and will always vote for higher taxes (Cambridge, I’m talking to you). But the pain that comes from a poorly run state WILL become obvious eventually. In the meantime, we need to convince the 50% of MA voters who are ‘independents’ that there is a better way – the Republican way. The public employee unions will continue to be a financial black-hole, sucking in all tax revenues, until OTHER constituencies that need public monies finally get squeezed enough to realize what is happening. California will go over the fiscal cliff first, but Massachusetts will not be far behind. As Republicans in a very blue state, we need to continue to make the case to our Un-enrolled neighbors that the Democrat policies lead to failure. By doing so we can hasten the arrival of the time MA wakes up and sees what the rest of the country saw last Tuesday: the way forward is to vote Republican.