A story behind a bunch of stories

[nancylebov]

http://www.npr.org/2014/01/15/262733742/one-party-to-rule-them-all-why-the-gop-is-winning-the-statehouse-war

Briefly, both parties have realized that you can use national-scale money to win local elections, which means that more states have become one party states. The Republicans are better at this, at least in part because they tend to like practical politics more than Democrats do.

This bit of background explains why we have rather sudden extreme changes happening at the state level-- same sex marriage and marijuana legalization (more or less) on one hand, and refusal to cooperate with Obamacare on the other.

I assume the national parties will run out of easy local victories, but I have no idea what's likely to happen after that.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

If spending large amounts of money influences how people think, and if the Republicans are better at it, then ideas should be shifting toward the ones favored by Republicans. I'm not seeing this. Same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization, generally seen as Democratic or at least non-Republican positions, are getting increasing support. Opposition to broad government surveillance is growing, and that tends to be a Republican position (though it shifts abruptly when the White House changes hands), but that's not a position the Republicans have been pushing very much on the level of broad spending.

Opposition to Obamacare could be supporting evidence, but I really think the failure of the website and Obama's conspicuous inconsistencies are bigger factors there.

It will be interesting to see of Christie can spend his way back to respectability.