Image 01 Image 03

Should We Be Concerned About Blue Staters Moving To Red States?

Should We Be Concerned About Blue Staters Moving To Red States?

Living in red states and “being liberal can be challenging and it can be frightening”

https://www.270towin.com/maps/2016-actual-electoral-map

Perhaps nothing less than losing the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump could have motivated the left to brainstorm ways to tackle their popular vote problem.  The left tends to gravitate to the coasts and until relatively recently have left “flyover” country to the deplorable unwashed masses.

Some on the left seem to be, in increasing numbers, coming to the conclusion that they need a Plan B in case their lunge to the progressive left doesn’t pan out.

To that end, leftists are positing a variety of ways to infiltrate red states and turn them blue.  From moving numerous government offices to flyover country to congregating in and taking over the political and socio-cultural center of major cities in red states, the left seems to be alert to the fact that the massive influx of blue staters to red states can make a difference to the political fortunes of their party and, ultimately, of its agenda.

Late last year, Vox posited the idea of moving government agencies to the Midwest.  The idea, of course, is that the government employees forced to relocate to these Siberian outreaches would carry with them the torch of big government beneficence.  And vote accordingly.

Vox wrote:

 A sensible approach would be for the federal government to take the lead in rebalancing America’s allocation of population and resources by taking a good hard look at whether so much federal activity needs to be concentrated in Washington, DC, and its suburbs.

Moving agencies out of the DC area to the Midwest would obviously cause some short-term disruptions. But in the long run, relocated agencies’ employees would enjoy cheaper houses, shorter commutes, and a higher standard of living, while Midwestern communities would see their population and tax base stabilized and gain new opportunities for complementary industries to grow.

Vox goes on to note the many and various problems of midwest communities without identifying the cause.

The poorest places in the United States have been poor for a very long time and lack the basic infrastructure of prosperity. But that’s not true in the Midwest, where cities were thriving two generations ago and where an enormous amount of infrastructure is in place. Midwestern states have acclaimed public university systems, airports that are large enough to serve as major hubs, and cities whose cultural legacies include major league pro sports teams, acclaimed museums, symphonies, theaters, and other amenities of big-city living.

But industrial decline has left these cities overbuilt, with shrunken populations that struggle to support the legacy infrastructure, and the infrastructure’s decline tends to only beget further regional decline.

The idea of moving government agencies to the Midwest is an ambitious one that would require political wrangling and wide-spread voter support, but the idea is to mitigate the concentration of leftists in coastal urban areas.

A less-ambitious, more realistic model for infiltrating red states is, perhaps ironically, rooted in the attractiveness of red state taxes, cost of living, and etc. to the tech, medical, financial and other industries.  As California taxes out business and makes unaffordable housing for all but the very rich and the very poor (who are subsidized), cities like Houston actively campaign to be the site of relocation.

Salon published an unintentionally hilarious account of leftists moving to red states; in this piece, entitled “Blue in a red state: Learning to confront, conform to or otherwise navigate your neighbors’ right-wing reality,” Salon suggests that imitating the troglodyte natives will ensure their goodwill.

On some occasions, it’s best to say as little as possible. Chris in Cincinnati, Ohio, is quick to talk liberalism—except when he’s hanging out with his ice hockey team. Spike in Sandia Park, New Mexico, and Dean in Pawleys Island, South Carolina, are both white men in their sixties who often hear off hand right-wing comments from people who assume they are conservative, and then have to determine whether it’s worth speaking up.

Diane in Fairbanks, Alaska, occasionally talks politics with her neighbors but never lets it get too heated—she’s always mindful she might need that neighbor to dig her out of the next big storm. Some might call this strategy “passing”—going undercover, by conscious deception or simple omission, to blend into conservative surroundings, staying quiet through sticky moments, or deftly navigating around political minefields in one’s neighborhood or workplace.

. . . . However, whether they find their kindred spirits in small clusters or online, when these liberals walk out their doors, they come face-to-face with—and need to learn to confront, conform to, or otherwise navigate—their right-wing reality: TVs in local venues are tuned to Fox News. Co-workers can quote Rush Limbaugh. Anti-Obama comments are rife, made as a casual matter of fact, often ignorant and sometimes crossing the line to racist. Neighbors and colleagues assume that everyone attends church, and some are suspicious of those who don’t. The same assumptions are made about gun ownership.

In these settings, being liberal can be challenging and it can be frightening. As one woman in Oklahoma City confessed, before she found other liberals she could talk with who gave her confidence, she would have been too nervous to “come out of the closet as a liberal.”

This Jane Goodall approach to studying we strange humanoids of flyover country and to drawing conclusions about what will make a given primate react in a given way highlights the incredible disdain the wannabe ruling class has for America and her citizens.

Another example appears in a tortured op-ed for USA Today, one California leftie who moved to a red state for economic reasons (her husband’s new job) is incredibly conflicted.  She heaps praises on the denizens of her new flyover town within the only rubric she knows:  she dredges up historical facts to try to demonstrate that her new town, and thus she, is not a white supremacist Nazi fascist blah blah blah.

USA Today reports:

As I settled into life in the Midwest, I heard the same assumptive questions: “Did everyone you know vote for Donald Trump?” “Are there African-American, Jewish, Asian, LGBTQ people in Indiana?” “Do people make fun of you for listening to National Public Radio?”

Never does one ask about Indiana’s history as a blue state (Indiana cast its electoral votes blue for President Barack Obama in 2008).

Perhaps most telling, however, is the author’s realization that living in a red state has helped her and her family immensely.  She intends, however, to vote for the same progressives and Democrats who destroyed her home state.

Never does one ask about the low cost of living that is allowing us to pay off the mountain of debt we accrued in California. And never does one ask about my fellow community members, who are running successful businesses, enriching the city’s arts and making a difference for the local environment.

. . . . I’ve come to realize that my votes and actions can have a deeper impact away from the sea of blue where I previously lived. During the 2016 presidential election, so many California voters who didn’t like candidates Hillary Clinton or Trump chose not to vote at all, stating their vote won’t matter since California will certainly cast its electoral votes for Clinton. Here in Vigo County, where the difference between the candidates was only 6,002 votes, my vote does have an impact.

She and her husband are paying off, in her words, “mountains of debt” due to the “low cost of living” in Indiana.  In the next breath she expresses her intention to vote for the exact same regressive, big government policies that make California increasingly unaffordable for all but the very rich and the very very poor.

This is nothing new, of course.  Blue staters fleeing to red states in response to the policies and taxes they supported has been prevalent for years.

Indeed, for decades now, we’ve seen red state urban areas flooded with blue state refugees.  As this happens, Republicans and right-leaning voters’ voices have been increasingly silenced.  Rural areas simply can’t compete with heavily-populated urban centers.

The Atlantic observes:

The United States now has its most metropolitan president in recent memory: a Queens-bred, skyscraper-building, apartment-dwelling Manhattanite. Yet it was rural America that carried Donald Trump to victory; the president got trounced in cities. Republican reliance on suburbs and the countryside isn’t new, of course, but in the presidential election, the gulf between urban and nonurban voters was wider than it had been in nearly a century. Hillary Clinton won 88 of the country’s 100 biggest counties, but still went down to defeat.

American cities seem to be cleaving from the rest of the country, and the temptation for liberals is to try to embrace that trend. With Republicans controlling the presidency, both houses of Congress, and most statehouses, Democrats are turning to local ordinances as their best hope on issues ranging from gun control to the minimum wage to transgender rights. Even before Inauguration Day, big-city mayors laid plans to nudge the new administration leftward, especially on immigration—and, should that fail, to join together in resisting its policies.

Florida is an example of a (formerly) reliably red state turning increasingly purple due to the migration of (mostly) New Englanders flooding our state as they retire, seek warmer climes, and/or desire to live in a state without a state income tax.  They get here, and then promptly vote for all the failed policies that contributed to their decision to leave their blue states.

Red states are happy to welcome blue state refugees and businesses seeking greener pastures, but it would be much appreciated if they would leave their politics in the ridiculously expensive, oppressively busybody blue states they’ve fled.

DONATE

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.

Comments

Coloradoopenrange | September 23, 2017 at 12:40 pm

Hell, Colorado is actively courting Amazon. The Governor is paying political payolla to Brownstein Hyatt to grease the skids of Democratic donations with taxpayer funds. We are being screwed.

    Conservatives may as well sweeten their coffee with cyanide if they shop at AMZN vs shopping local. Bringing Hq2 to your city will assure about 50k more liberal votes.

      notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to Andy. | September 23, 2017 at 2:26 pm

      Jeff Belzo’s Amazon sales are going to drop just like the NFL revenues.

      Besides sellers on Etsy and EBay are usually cheaper than Amazon now. Just in the past week I read about the extortionate fees Amazon charges sellers listing there.

        notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital. | September 23, 2017 at 3:41 pm

        Plus always check the web sites of national chains who have stores in your town.

        I just found one item 30% cheaper than the cheapest listed on Amazon.

        So I can pick the item up locally today, and pocket the 30% savings!

The best single measure to cope with this would be the resumption of state citizenship: you’re born a citizen of the state you are born in, as well as of the United States, but must have a period of residency and pass a state knowledge test before changing your state citizenship / voting registration to a new state.

    notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to ecreegan. | September 23, 2017 at 12:51 pm

    There are some “residency” requirements in some states before voting is allowed – just not long enough.

    Maybe the residency should be in “years.”

      The default residency should be five years, so that state-citizens-to-be have a year to acculturate and then have an gubernatorial election they *watch* rather than participate

        notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to ecreegan. | September 23, 2017 at 1:16 pm

        That sounds good to me.

        There’s no guarantee you could do that for state elections; there’s no way you could do it for Federal… and that’s what this is all about.

        Get the Senate, flip the Electoral College, pack the Federal courts, and then rediscover the Federal supremacy they deny for immigration.

    Yikes, that would make me, the military daughter of a conservative Midwesterner and an uber-conservative Southerner, a New Englander! Noooooo! 😛

    Milhouse in reply to ecreegan. | September 24, 2017 at 4:22 am

    The constitution explicitly forbids this. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital | September 23, 2017 at 12:50 pm

“You Betcha!”

It’s a similar problem with people who immigrate to the US, even legally (me.) They come for the better place to live and enjoy the fruits but keep their former country’s politics. We used to be a country that was a melting pot, no more. Assimilate is a bad word now. I think that is why there is a disconnect between politics and life. Once multi-culturism took over it became inevitable. You see the change over the years vividly here in So. Calif. People don’t know why this country is better than anywhere else and so they continue to vote accordingly with ignorance. They also have no encouragement to find out, especially since the media says we’re actually the “Big Satan.” I ended up voting for Trump, after my guy lost in the primary mostly because of this. If we don’t stand up and claim boldly to be proud Americans, nothing will change.

Red states need to learn, better be proud red staters or your state will inevitably go blue!

The short answer: Yes, we should!

As a person who has watched Virginia turn from a solid-red, to purple, to now blue state, it is DEFINITELY a threat when the left decides to move in, because it is an invasion with the purpose of taking over, politically, and “flipping” a state.

See also: California. Massachusetts – well, ALL of New England, actually. Even Florida.

…. and, unless we are very careful, Texas.

    William A. Jacobson in reply to DINORightMarie. | September 23, 2017 at 1:13 pm

    Are you suggesting we build a wall along the California and New York borders? 🙂

      regulus arcturus in reply to William A. Jacobson. | September 23, 2017 at 1:57 pm

      As an AZ resident, I will tell you that it is not a half-bad idea to wall off CA, and kick them out of the US in an Article V convention.

      With the flow of ex-CA residents to neighboring states like AZ, we see them bring their idiotic politics with them.

      This has happened in AZ, and CO, and the danger in ”primarying” Sen. Flake with Dr. Kelli Ward is that Ward will likely win the primary, she may lose the general thanks to the growing “moderate” (read: loony left CA) voter pool. This could have dramatic ripple effects in the Senate.

      We also get to replace Sen. McCain shortly, but that will be accomplished more reliably by Gov. Ducey.

      That said, significant parts of CA do not support the wacky coastal politics of imminent stupidity, and should be allowed to remain in the US.

      AZ should then negotiate with Mexico to annex the entire area adjacent to the Colorado River down to the Gulf of CA, and build a deepwater port at Puerto Penasco (Rocky Point).

        Spiny Norman in reply to regulus arcturus. | September 23, 2017 at 2:54 pm

        “That said, significant parts of CA do not support the wacky coastal politics of imminent stupidity, and should be allowed to remain in the US.”

        But aren’t we just as guilty, because “we let it happen”?

        Your negotiation with MX would be difficult because it would physically partition the land of Mexico. I doubt they would give that up cheaply, even though in lower Baja everyone uses a plane or a boat or ferry to get there anyway.

      I wouldn’t. We have at our disposal a powerful tool for dealing with ignorant Progressives, that goes by the nick-name “red pill.”

      A red pill is a little bit of verifiable, pertinent, historical information on a given topic. Just like the collection of facts that is usually found near the beginning of a well-crafted legal opinion, an apt selection of red pills in a political or scientific discussion can transform the evaluation of a person charged with making a decision.

      The reason I even bother to use this slang term is that the pranksters (they call themselves “centipedes”) over at The_Donald at Reddit have been merrily distributing red pills by the thousands: that is, engaging in adult political education (admittedly often by juvenile means). Moreover, GOOGLE and FaceBook have become alarmed at the effectiveness of this education. Both entities have taken deliberate steps inhibit the dissemination of historical facts, where they are couched in terms disadvantageous to the Democratic Party as it is currently configured.

      The actions of these alleged business entities in support of very one-sided propaganda efforts is open and documented. A common element of recent discussions is the observation that “even the normies (that, I assume, is us) have begun to notice.”

      People who are enlightened by facts previously unknown to them can flip their voting habits overnight.

      My recommendation for those who are fortunate enough to live in the better-run states is to welcome your newbies, and teach them well.

OleDirtyBarrister | September 23, 2017 at 2:01 pm

The people in red states are worried about it because of what it is doing to our states. Consider the mess in NC that has become worse with the influx of half-backs after the hurricanes of the 2004-05 era. They move in, vote for Dem policies, taxes go up, they complain about taxes being too high for retired people on fixed income, and then threaten to move. It never occurs to the luddites that they are the problem.

Places in GA (particularly metro Atlanta) once repped in the General Assembly by Repubs as recently as 15 years ago are now electing Dem reps due to the influx of liberal yankees and blacks.

OleDirtyBarrister | September 23, 2017 at 2:03 pm

People in Texas are concerned as well, due to influx Californicators, liberal yankees, and an adverse immigration trend that might include amnesty.

Should we be concerned?

In a word, YES !!!

Case in point, the State of New Hampshire is now long gone, gone, gone.

The tactic is an old one. Muslims have used it repeatedly for 1400 years, right up to this very moment. As Qaddafi once put it, “Muslim wombs will win the day once they’re in Europe.” And it’s working. And Europe has all those bombings to prove it. And since the global elite are determined to change the nature and populations of Western countries into membership into the third world, a huge assist came from Merkel, a globalist for certain.

The Chinese have done this; so too the old USSR, and Hilter. Dilute the good, and the bad will come through.

Take nice, creamy vanilla ice cream (red states), and let it soften slightly. Now mix in some vinegar (and it need not be a lot). What taste will be the more prominent, the vanilla or the vinegar?

Don’t lump all blue staters as progressives. There are a lot of us conservatives trapped in blue state hellholes who would flee as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

    Good point! Come on over/down to Florida, we’d love to have you. 🙂

    notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to nordic_prince. | September 23, 2017 at 2:27 pm

    So true. Remember when New England was the last word in “true” Conservatism?

    Spiny Norman in reply to nordic_prince. | September 23, 2017 at 2:47 pm

    The problem is that we blue state conservatives magically transform into liberal loons the moment we cross the state line. Or so red state internet conservatives have told me, over and over: “well, maybe you might come here, as long as you leave your politics behind”.

    What the hell is that supposed to mean? Leave my conservative politics behind? Why would I do that?

    (Don’t worry guys, when I am finally able to escape the Peoples’ Republic of California, I won’t go anywhere near Texas, not even passing through. I’ve been warned off enough.)

What I hesitate to put online, even in the comment section, is that the solution to Democrat Party’s electoral problems is in figuring out why their voters are moving from blue to red states. Are they being pushed out by circumstances in blue states, or pulled out by better circumstances in red states?

Shhhhhhhhhhh….

Yes, be concerned.

There’s an older red / blue piece from The Manhattan Institute a couple years back with a less stunned message: a former red-stater suddenly living rural notes that need for and possibility off doing things with legislation or regulation changes as people are more spread out. Worth reading. No, I can’t find the link.

The trick is to pry them away from little clots of like-minded, to “red-pill” them with direct experiences. Like let’s tax the hell out of those pickup trucks that nobody needs. But, more out on the range, a truck is darn handy. Where I grew up, everybody picked their car for how it worked in unplowed snow. Everybody carried a tow chain or similar to help people out of a ditch. And everybody stopped to help someone stuck in a ditch. Hard to do in a Yugo.

LOL, move D.C. to change states from red to blue.
Imagine how happy those plebes would be IF congress and DJT agreed to send the departments to other states.
Unless feds pay off mortgages, move extended family and other things those folks that got forced to move might not be so happy with the progressive agenda.
Especially if they have a big mortgage. The first batch might get close to asking price but if enough were moved out the housing market would collapse and they’d lose their azz.
And hey Labor dept, we’re moving you to Cleveland. It’s like Detroit only not as pretty. You’ll fit right in at your new home town, just don’t believe the slogan “Cleveland – Where the weak are killed and eaten”.

Insufficiently Sensitive | September 23, 2017 at 8:22 pm

The idea, of course, is that the government employees forced to relocate to these Siberian outreaches would carry with them the torch of big government beneficence. 

One might think that this idea is a spinoff from the mighty grants from NPR to support its stations in unprofitable backwoods communities, hoping to preach that progressive big-government gospel to the unwashed. This is not small change, and has been going on for years.

Funny stuff. Salon thinks Fox News is “conservative”.

Delusions of adequacy are always comic.

But I doubt that any large-scale migration is imminent. Not all that many liberals want to devote their lives to missionary work.

There’s a common lie leftists keep repeating, that the so-called “red states” (I hate that we’ve accepted that terminology instead of resisting it) are net recipients of tax money while the “blue states” are net payers. This astonishing statistic is arrived at by counting how much federal money is spent in each state, and considering that the amount each state has received from the common fisc. Moving federal offices to “red states” would exacerbate that; every penny spent on such offices would count, in these people’s eyes, as money the state has received, for which the state ought to be grateful, even if it’s spent on damaging the state and hurting its interests.

Why don’t we require voting to be weighted based on outcomes? Voters in successful states should have their votes count more than those in less successful states.

Democrats who move from blue states to red states are the political version of the rats that spread bubonic plague in Europe in the fourteenth century.

I think we should move most of the federal agencies to Flint or Detroit.