The case was just the latest example of how red states, supported by Republican-appointed judges, are engaging in a multi-front offensive to seize control of national policy even while Democrats hold the White House and nominally control both the House and Senate. The red states are moving social policy sharply to the right within their borders on issues from abortion to LGBTQ rights and classroom censorship, while simultaneously working to hobble the ability of either the federal government or their own largest metro areas to set a different course.
To a degree unimaginable even a decade ago, this broad offensive increasingly looks like an effort to define a nation within a nation — one operating with a set of rules and policies that diverge from the rest of America more than in almost any previous era.
“The only time I can recall in American history even remotely like this [divergence] was after the Civil War when the separate but equal doctrine began to emerge” across the South as a backlash against the attempts of the 13th, 14th and 15th Constitutional amendments to ensure equality for the freed slaves, says Donald Kettl, the former dean of the public policy school at the University of Maryland and author of the book, “The Divided States of America.” He added, “It’s a multifront war with very sharp swords.”
The willingness of so many red states to adopt these common approaches testifies in part to the energetic organizing efforts of many conservative groups, from Heritage Action and the American Legislative Exchange Council to the Republican Attorneys General Association. But even more profoundly, the alignment of so many red states behind this shared agenda and strategy underscores how many of them are being shaped by a common set of economic and demographic trends.
On everything from gun ownership and religious affiliation to reliance on fossil fuels and participation (or not) in the 21st century information economy, most red states are following similar tracks, while diverging more sharply from the experience in blue states. Broadly speaking, blue states are more heavily exposed to the big demographic, cultural and economic forces reshaping American life, while red states are less exposed, and to the extent they are, those changes are centered overwhelmingly on their large metropolitan areas, which are trending Democratic and often — like in Austin or Atlanta — are a target for the Republicans controlling state government.
“It’s not at the level of Jim Crow, or certainly the difference between slave states and free states, but the differences are major,” says Jake Grumbach, a University of Washington political scientist who studies divergence among the states. And like Kettl, Grumbach believes the economic and political differences between the red and blue states are on track to only widen.
