The Election's Impact on the Midwest

"Democracy," said H.L. Mencken, "is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." In the wake of the midterm elections, Mencken's dictum is about to get a workout.

Nowhere is this more true than in the Midwest. In many Midwestern states, the "common people" have just elected governors and other officials who oppose precisely the policies -- on government spending, infrastructure, education and immigration -- that are crucial to the Midwest's economic recovery.

David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, wrote that "the old industrial towns in the Midwest were the epicenter of the disaster" for the Democrats. Post-election maps made this graphic, with great swatches of Republican red across a region where, after 2008, Democrats actually dominated office-holders. 

But the question now is what this Republican sweep, and especially the ascendancy of the Tea Party, means for the real goals of the Midwest -- the reversal of its long-term economic decline, its recovery from the recession, its shift from old industry to a new global economy, its ability to fund the education and find the investment that will propel this shift.

The first signs are grim. Midwestern voters, as Mencken could have told them, are about to get what they deserve:

• Tax cuts, which means both higher deficits in states that already are wallowing in debt and less money for these states to do what needs to be done. In other words:
• Less governnment, which means less government investment to towns and cities that have relied on state and federal funds to pay the bills. Somewhere, these localities are going to have to find the money themselves or see their quality of life crumble.
• Less government spending on education. Not that the electees are necessarily hostile to schools. But in any budget squeeze, schools -- especially universities -- are the first to get cut. The fact that university research is a key to reviving the Midwestern economy cuts no ice, especially since universities are seen as part of the "elite" which the Tea Party has vowed to punish.
• Less spending on infrastructure, like high-speed rail -- an investment that could link the Midwest's isolated towns and cities and enable them to leverage each other's strengths.
• Hostility to immigration. In much of the Midwest, immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, are keeping declining populations afloat and injecting much-needed new ideas and money. No one denies that immigration reform is needed. But keeping immigrants out now could doom some declining areas.
• No help in fighting the recession. Federal government programs, like the stimulus, kept this recession from being worse than it is and literally rescued America's auto industry from bankruptcy. This help won't be available now if the recession dives into a second trough.
• Anti-globalization. The Midwest has always lived by trading. An open global economy is failing the region now, as industrial jobs get shipped overseas or are lost to labor-saving technology installed to meet global competition. The solution is a stronger safety net (plus stronger schools), not new trade barriers. But the anger at globalization, corporations and foreigners exhibited in the midterm election makes this balanced response unlikely or impossible.

This is not a Democrat-vs.-Republican issue. On most of the major issues facing the Midwestern economy, Democrats and Republicans have shared a broad agreement on priorities, like education, economic development, better infrastructure, trade, even immigration. Republican business people who lobby for lower corporate taxes and less regulation still appreciate the way state-supported schools educate their workers and know that state-supported communications, from highways to fiber optics, enable them to do business. 

Much of the new Republican majority lies outside this consensus. On my travels around the Midwest, I've become a regular listener to Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the other avatars of the New Right. Limbaugh is an old-fashioned radio ranter, who lauds Republicans and conservatives, scourges Democrats and liberals, hates taxes and government. Beck and his followers are more nuanced, if that's the word. In fact, they may not be Republicans at all.

This isn't my judgment. It's their's. Many Tea Partiers see themselves are as a separate party. In a sense, they've invaded the Republican Party, not joined it. Now they intend to take it over. If they fail, then they'll go somewhere else. But at this moment, their ideals are not for bending.

These ideals include a deep hostility toward government, taxes, deficit spending, "elites," normal give-and-take politics, plus a willingness to tar opponents as "socialists" or "communists." Few voters, Republican or Democratic, favor bigger government and higher taxes. But most voters know that, in a modern economy, government and taxes play a role. They understand that, in a recession, deficit spending is a sensible weapon. And they know that politics is the art of the possible, not some zero-sum game.

Not so the Tea Party people, which makes them so dangerous to mainstream conservative Republicans. These GOP stalwarts -- Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels for instance, or Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, even newbies like Illinois Senator-elect Mark Kirk -- definitely belong on the right-leaning side of the political spectrum. Presumably, they'd support tax reforms or quibble with the politicies of the Federal Reserve Board. But none would argue, as the Tea Partiers do, that the Fed or the American tax code is unconstitutional. They might agree that the Mexican border needs more patrols, but they wouldn't call for all illegal immigrants to be rounded up and deported.

Beck and other Tea Party pundits have drawn a line between "constitutional conservatives" -- people like themselves, who want to go back to an original reading and eccentric understanding of the Constitution, and who oppose most of what's happened in the past century -- and "progressive conservatives," like Lugar, who are comfortable in the 21st century. 

Lugar, a leader of the Senate moderates, faces re-election in 2012 and already is in the Tea Party's sights. Other face the same challenge. Any mainstream Republican suspected of moderation is certain to be challenged in the next round of primaries. To say the least, this is going to dampen their enthusiasm for any policies -- any spending on education or infrastructure, any money for research, any search for a middle ground on immigration -- that could give the Midwest what it so desperately needs.

The signs already are visible.

The Wisconsin governor-elect, Scott Walker, opposes the planned high-speed rail line between Madison and Milwaukee, and the Wisconsin government has halted work on the line until it can assess the situation. Walker also opposes stem-cell research, an area where the University of Wisconsin leads the nation. If stem-cell research leads to new investment and companies, it probably won't happen in Wisconsin.

The Ohio governor-elect, John Kasich, devoted part of his first press conference to shooting down any hope of a high-speed rail line into Dayton, a city which needs all the help it can get. Kasich also has said he wants to scrap the Third Frontier Project, perhaps the Midwest's most successful program for state funding of research-based industry.

Two of the Midwest's noisiest anti-immigration congressmen, Steve King of Iowa and Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, both won big on Tuesday. King is a vocal supporter of Rep. Michelle Bachman, the Tea Party favorite from Minnesota, who is campaigning for a spot in the House Republican leadership. Bachmann's district, incidentally, includes Lake Wobegon -- or, rather, the town of Freeport, which is the model for Garrison Keillor's stories.

If Mencken was right, the results of the midterm election are about to hit the Midwest, good and hard. 

Comments

[Joel David Malkin]

Dick, I know you've said in the past that Chicago is "bleeding dry" other parts of the Midwest. Do you think that these election results, and the Democrats' retention of power in Illinois, will only further that trend?

[Richard Longworth]

Joel........This issue has two parts -- the attractiveness of Chicago to business, finance and especially to young people seeking challenging jobs, and the relative weakness of too much of the rest of the Midwest -- it's non-attractiveness, if you will. The first depends more on the Chicago mayoral election coming up than on the midterm election last week. The Illinois state government and its finances, as everybody knows, are a mess, and are a drag on Chicago itself: it's going to take more than a Democratic victory to fix this. But the election results in many other Midwestern states, as I said, are likely to weaken those states. By cutting education and the other factors that make these states an attractive place for both investment and job-seekers, both money and young people will continue to flow out -- to Chicago, if Chicago plays it right, or to the coasts, if it doesn't.