The Real Political Divide

Fascinating read at the American Conservative Magazine, regarding demographics, birthrates and the distrubution of Republicans and Democrats. It may well turn out that bitter-child-hostile-liberal-women are to be the undoing of the democratic party. Interesting read. A couple of excerpts below. -SpinDaddy

". . .While the Christian Right in Kansas doesn’t much hold with Darwin, they are doing well at the basic Darwinian task of reproducing themselves: pro-life Kansas has the fourth-highest white fertility in the country at 2.06 babies per woman, and the birthrate of the conservative Republicans that Frank finds so baffling is likely to be even higher. On the crucial question of whether a group can be bothered not to die out, “What’s the Matter with Massachusetts?” would be a more pertinent question. Massachusetts’s whites are failing to replace themselves, averaging only 1.6 babies per woman, and the state’s liberal-angry-embittered-man-hating-type of Democrats [of which there are plenty in MA, NY, SFO,etc] are probably reproducing even less than that.
So white birthrates and Republican voting are closely correlated, but what causes what? The arrow of causality seems to flow in both directions . . . the cost-of-living calculator provided by Realtor.com says that a $100,000 salary in liberal Manhattan buys only as much as a $38,000 salary in conservative Pinehurst, North Carolina. Likewise, a San Francisco couple earning $100,000 between them can afford just as much in Cedar City, Utah if the husband can find a $44,000-a-year job—and then the wife can stay home with their children. Moreover, the culture of Cedar City is more conducive to child rearing than San Francisco . . . Manhattan liberals all believe in celebrating diversity in theory but typically draw the line at subjecting their own offspring to it in the public schools . . . With more children, the couple will have less money per child to buy insulation from America’s corrosive media culture, so they are likely to look to the government for help . . ."