Don't it make my Red State Blue

Sebastian has a link to a story about how California is losing population quicker than mercury drops when Al Gore enters the room.
He goes on to note that these recent residents of the Golden State often bring their big government, blue state mentalities to their newly adopted states. Then we see the phenomenon of a staunchly red state turning purple then finally blue. The lists of states where this has happened is legion. Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Nevada, Colorado, Oregon, Washington State, New Hampshire..on and on.

This has been going on for years.

Some may remember when Connecticut was staunchly Republican. It's ironic to know that Connecticut was one of the few states to not go to FDR in 1932. Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine were the only other states to resist the clarion call to Socialism in 1932. These all went for Obama in 2008. So much for granite-ribbed, Conservative New England. It is as dead as the dodo.

How does this happen?

Well, here's what I think:

I don't think it is anything intentional on the part of the people who move to more free states like NH, Montana, Nevada, Arizona etc.; it is more that they have grown accustomed to the services that big government provides.

Case in point:

A lot of rural and not so rural New Hampshire town do not provide curb side trash collection. You take your stuff down to the town dump and get rid of it yourself. This keeps government small and taxes low. The thing these new people don't understand is that to keep taxes low, you have to do without A LOT of government services. That means no curb side trash collection, no new million dollar school buildings, no new libraries......

But they are used to and want these things and thus vote for the politicians that inevitably spring up and say they will give them what they want. These politicians are invariably Democratic.

All of a sudden a red state is purple then blue.

And a lot of new citizens of the formerly low tax red state are scratching their heads and wondering why their tax bills are so high.

Unfortunately, this is why expanding or even keeping and maintaining a culture of self reliant limited government is so daunting. The fact is that the vast majority of people do not want to be self reliant. They don't want to pay high taxes, but they want the services that big government provides. But when it gets down to brass tacks, they will pay the high taxes to get the services. Until this changes, we will continue to have this problem.