New York Times: Blue state meltdown

Liberalism's sunset? People do vote their pocketbooks.

From the (gasp!) New York Times:

The urban scholar Joel Kotkin has called this recession a blue-state "meltdown." That overstates the case: The Deep South has been hit hard by unemployment, and some liberal regions are weathering the storm reasonably well. And clearly part of the blame for the current crisis rests with decisions made in George W. Bush's Washington.

But in state capital after state capital, the downturn has highlighted the weaknesses of liberal governance — the zeal for unsustainable social spending, the preference for regulation over job creation, the heavy reliance for tax revenue on the volatile incomes of the upper upper class.

And, inevitably, the tendency toward political corruption. The Republicans have their mistresses, but the Democrats are dealing with a more serious array of scandals: the Blagojevich-Burris embarrassment in Illinois, Senator Christopher Dodd's dubious mortgage dealings in Connecticut, the expansive graft case in New Jersey, and a slew of corruption investigations featuring Democratic congressmen.

This helps explain why the Republican Party might be competitive in the Northeast for the first time in years. Chris Christie is easily leading Jon Corzine in the race for New Jersey's governorship. Rob Simmons might unseat Chris Dodd in Connecticut. Rudy Giuliani, who has experience with blue-state crises, is pondering a run for the statehouse in New York.

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