In a special election yesterday, the Republicans lost a Congressional seat in upstate New York that they had held since 1960, partly due to the Medicare issue. (After themselves raiding Medicare, and destroying popular Medicare Advantage plans, to fund costly Obamacare mandates, the Democrats turned around and bashed the Republicans for trying to limit the rate of growth of future Medicare spending by giving some future retirees vouchers).
The GOP’s loss refutes the conventional wisdom promoted by libertarians and some Republican leaders that upstate New York voters share a “deep economic conservatism” but are liberal on social issues due to their Yankee (as opposed to southern) roots. As someone with libertarian leanings, I wish that were the case, but it’s just not true. The truth is just the opposite: upstate New Yorkers tend to be somewhat liberal on fiscal issues, but somewhat conservative on social issues like guns and immigration.
The Republican candidate in the race was socially liberal and fiscally conservative – she supported the limits on Medicare recently passed by the House, but also was pro-choice on abortion – but she lost by a comfortable six-point margin in a historically Republican district. Fiscal conservatism clashed with Medicare entitlements, and lost. Given America’s skyrocketing budget deficit, that’s unfortunate.
But it shouldn’t be a huge surprise, given the reliance of the elderly on Medicare, and the aging upstate New York electorate: as Wintery Knight notes, due to New York State’s stagnant and overregulated economy, and high taxes to fund its generous welfare and Medicaid programs, “one third of young New Yorkers plan to leave the state,” continuing a longstanding exodus and brain drain of young people. Much of upstate New York now has an out-migration rate bigger than West Virginia and Appalachia.
When I go on C-Span, and take a call from a caller on the “Republican” line from an upstate New York city like Syracuse, I know that the caller will say something liberal, despite supposedly being a “Republican.” Even the Congressional Budget Office admitted that the $800 billion stimulus package would shrink the economy in the long run, but every upstate New Yorker I’ve spoken with on the air has backed that humongous waste of taxpayer money (never mind that it subsidized foreign green jobs at the expense of American jobs, wiped out jobs in America’s export sector, and was criticized by many economists). Many upstate New Yorkers see big government as their economic savior.
On economic issues, upstate New Yorkers haven’t been conservative for a long time. Their support for big government may be one reason why their state is so overregulated, its unemployment rate is so high, and its economic growth is so slow.
True, upstate New Yorkers aren’t flaming liberals, either. The NRA boasts a lot of members there, and gay-marriage is both less popular, and less of a burning issue, there than in liberal New York City. But those are social issues, not economic issues. Many so-called “Republicans” in upstate New York are actually moderate Democrats in all but name.
Megan McArdle, a socially-liberal, fiscally-conservative pundit at The Atlantic, expressed the hopeful view that her views were shared by the upstate New York region she left behind. She wrote:
This is just wishful thinking. Most people don’t understand economics, or appreciate how a free market functions (many view economics as the “dismal science.”) And her assumption that New York State’s farmers – who receive dairy and other farm subsidies – are necessarily fiscal conservatives is a dubious premise. (All the farmers in my family since the New Deal were Democrats, no doubt thanks to costly farm subsidies).
