The Vanishing Republican Voter - An Analysis - NYTimes.com
There is a dangerous tendency for those within the Beltway to think that DC could be representative of the country as a whole, but it is not. DC and its environs owe their existence and prosperity to the great big growth of the federal government. It should not, therefore, be surprising that DC and its environs vote Democratic. This is not an area that would benefit from the shrinking of government or the elimination of agencies.
There’s a reason that housing prices in DC are still high. We in the Beltway live in a recession-proof bubble. The worse the economy gets, the more government spends, and this tends to drive up the prices of the thousands and thousands of mansions inhabited by the power brokers of Washington.
