The Fruitful Party vs. The Vegetative State

Opinion Journal’s “Best of the Web” linked yesterday to two USA Today articles on the demographics of the Republicans and Democrats. This is the first place I’ve actually seen statistics to back up the theory of the Roe effect:

Republicans control 49 of the 50 [congressional] districts with the highest rates of married people.

Democrats represent all 50 districts that have the highest rates of adults who have never married.

GOP Congress members represent 39.2 million children younger than 18, about 7 million more than Democrats. Republicans average 7,000 more children per district. . . .

Democrats represent 30 districts in which less than half of children live with married parents. Republicans represent none.

These numbers are followed by a hilarious quote, though Opinion Journal dubs it “evenhanded.” Bah —”evenhanded,” my foot. More like talking out of both sides of his mouth:
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… this evenhanded quote from Prof. Arthur Brooks of Syracuse University: “Both sides are very pro-kids. They just express it in different ways. Republicans are congenial to traditional families, which is clearly the best way for kids to grow up. But there are some kids who don’t have that advantage, and Democrats are very concerned with helping those kids.”

Sure they are. As long as they don’t actually have to bear the children themselves. In this they resemble their transnational European cousins. Like the sovereignty of nations, families with children are a disappearing breed. So to speak. And like the depressing Europeans, the forever single, forever childless make up the socialist base of the Dems:

Abortion is related to the marriage gap too. Abortion is a “single” issue in more ways than one: Every poll we’ve seen shows that unwed people of both sexes are far more pro-abortion than the espoused. This makes perfect sense: Singles, with their slapdash sex lives, are both unlikely to want kids and less likely than married couples to have reliable birth-control rituals. Thus they feel much more acutely the need for abortion as a last resort should they become or make someone pregnant. If you live in a place like New York, you’ll find lots of young adults who say they vote Democratic only because of abortion.

Of course, many of these people eventually get hitched and move to the suburbs, where some become Republicans, either because their views on abortion change or because it recedes in importance to them. (Relatedly, Republicans do better among wealthier voters; and wealth, like marriage, is a status to which many people who do not enjoy it aspire.)

Republicans, then, are outbreeding Democrats and doing better among voters whose personal lives are the most successful. All in all, the party of abortion is an unfruitful thing for the Democrats to be.[emphasis mine]

Unfruitful, with stale, outmoded policies and deep antagonism to any who don’t agree with them. Let’s put it this way — which situation would be more fraught with anxiety: you’re at a party and you’ve just been outed as a conservative in a group of mostly leftists…or, you’re at a party and you’ve just been outed as a leftist in a group of mostly conservatives? In which situation do you think you’d end up with spittle on your tie?

Answer: Someone on our blogroll says on his sidebar that he’s had more problems with coming out of the conservative closet than he ever did declaring his homosexuality:

I’m a guy in my thirties living on a true blue island in a very red state. Formerly an avid liberal back when the center of my personal universe was being “gay,” I gradually grew up and became more conservative throughout the 1990’s calling myself a “libertarian,” only to have a bucket of ice-cold reality thrown on me on 9/11. I realized then that I had another closet to come out of — the conservative one. I’ve lost more friends since opening that closet door than I ever did by coming out as gay. Shattering other people’s perceptions of you is usually a messy business.

I wonder if perhaps conservatives could talk the Dems into letting them into the tent via the “Americans with Disabilities” Act? We certainly do need protection from some of the battier of the Blues.

Tomorrow, the Baron and I will be heading to the Vegetarian Festival in Li’l Kumquat. The Baron will not be wearing his pinstripe suit and I will leave my George Bush campaign button at home — thus ensuring our safety whilst taking pictures of the myriad local “Peace and Justice” (or we’ll kill you) groups who inhabit that very blue little town.

Field report soon.