Irony Everywhere

Givers and Takers

The article above points out one of the central ironies of today's political divide: the people most likely to be living off the largess of the federal government are also the most likely to support shrinking it. I've seen this up close, and it's kind of funny. Working on museum projects for the federal government in Montana, I met lots of people who blamed the government for everything, even as it subsidized their chosen existence in a wind-swept and infertile hell by taking money out of my pocket. There's no way to make ends meet in a lot of the red states without the government intervening--if you want to talk about welfare queens, Dakotans, Montanans, Wyomingans, and Idahoans should be at the top of the list. Yet they're the very people who like to rail against the excesses of government, to tell everyone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Beyond the hypocrisy this irony makes evident, though, is a political problem for Democrats: how do we win when Republicans control the government and have the power to whisper soothing promises of smaller government into red states' ears while deftly putting federal money into their pockets at the same time? How can we beat a party that lets its supporters have it both ways--and uses our money to do it?