In an intriguing post, Stirling Newberry suggests that Reaganism set in motion basic economic and geographic forces that have led to a “self-inflicted recession” and shaped the demise of the conservative movement.
[T]he epicenters of that “Reagan Democrat” revolt are now the areas that are hardest hit by the present depression: California, the Upper Midwest, and the Sunbelt South. This is not an accident …
The only places that are doing well in the Republican universe are those strongly associated with mining, plus Republican metro centers such as Phoenix and Salt Lake City, which are the recipients of the labor draining from the rest of the Republican heartland. Resource extraction is the only bright spot in the Republican world …
The Bush boom produced a moment where it seemed like the producers of Residential Real Estate, the back bone of the Republican donating and agitating base, were finally at their pinnacle. Truck Dealers, Home Builders, Real Estate Agents, and the Small Business class that catered to the people who lived in the “boomburgs” saw rapid increases in employment, wages, and social power. They had the money and the confidence to try to press their social agenda on the rest of the country. It was, of course, doomed to failure; since none of these people made anything that could be exported; or if they did, it came at the costs of increased imports that counter-balanced them.
May 25th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Actually, according to today’s NY Times Obama carried Salt Lake City. Provo, Ogden & rural areas are still Republican.
May 26th, 2009 at 8:56 am
It was, of course, doomed to failure; since none of these people made anything that could be exported; or if they did, it came at the costs of increased imports that counter-balanced them.
That’s a weird standard. Isn’t that just some variation of classical mercantile economics, refuted by Ricardo 200 years ago?
May 26th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Land based inflation, while wide spread, looks to be particularly acute in blue areas of the map. The real cause of the current economic conflagration is the embrace of Neo-Keynesianism by both parties. We are now in the inevitable bust phase of the business cycle. The conservative retrenchment, although much deserved, owes much more to the current bust as well as their misadventures in Mesopotamia.