In my last post, I mentioned that almost 40 years ago a reform of the kind I support was implemented in Indianapolis, Indiana, under a Republican mayor, Richard Lugar, who is now an elder statesman of his party in the US Senate. You might have thought that such a reform, which amounts essentially to sharing tax base across a metropolitan region, would be regarded by Republicans as another instance of creeping socialism, of taking from the successful in order to reward the feckless, and that therefore any ambitious young mayor eager to advance in Republican party politics wouldn't go close to it. I meant to suggest that it ain't necessarily so--or, at least, it wasn't so back in 1970.
Republicans of Lugar's stripe are practically extinct. On the evidence of my occasional C-SPAN viewing, I'd say he's dispirited by what the Bush administration has wrought but too tired to protest or go over to the other side. His case sheds considerable light on the looming electoral disaster for Republicans. The moderate-minded voter who is skeptical of the power of government to get things done, yet wants it to run efficiently, has switched his registration. Dick Lugar represented what attracted these voters to the Republican party, but he's fossilized, and they don't like the living descendants. If you are skeptical of government being able to make over Indiana, why would you think it capable of transforming the politics of the contemporary Middle East?
The trend I'm talking about is well underway in Hennepin County, which not many years ago was a bellwether in statewide elections in Minnesota. Minneapolis has long provided the backbone of the DFL vote in the state, but the populous and affluent suburbs to its west and southwest were devotedly Republican. No more. In 2004, John Kerry outpolled George Bush by 59-39 in Hennepin County, carrying even Edina and Minnetonka, two suburbs whose names are (or were) to locals nearly synonymous with opulence and rock-ribbed Republican voting. Yet Kerry's victory in the state was by just fractionally more than three percent.
I remember, perhaps a dozen years ago, the Hennepin County Auditor, who oversaw the elections division, assuring me that household income was the single most important factor in determining voting behavior--the higher your income, he said, the more likely you were to vote, and the more likely you were to favor the Republicans. And it might have been true then. Now if you want to make a guess about how someone votes, you'd be better advised to ask about their church attendance. It's more predictive than income, because the well off Republicans are the ones who like guys like Lugar, and there aren't many like him left in the Grand Old Party.
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