tanked everything everywhere, California elected a Democratic governor and, even more important, a strong Dem majority in the California legislature. By following liberal principles, the CA Dems turned a deficit into a good surplus. Meanwhile, in Kansas (where I live), even "moderate" (I.e., regular *conservative*) Republicans were not sufficiently extreme for the super right wingers, so the primaried long term "moderate" Repubs out and filled the legislature with a big majority of extremely right wing Repubs. They also elected the most right wing administration imaginable, turning Kansas into Brownbackistan and thus tanking our economy to the point where our state's credit rating has been downgraded.
Even though the credit rating agency says that the extreme tax cuts--for the *wealthy* and for corporations, but NOT for the poor or middle class!--are the main reason for the downgraded credit rating, since they mean revenue will continue to fall, not recover, Brownback insists that his policies and tax cuts are not the reason our economy and credit rating are suffering. He says it's all the fault of Obama's economic policies, even though other states are seeing the job growth that KS is not seeing, and states like CA are improving economically under the same national economy, and so is the stock market.
Now, I realize that a soaring stock market and an increase in crappy, underpaid jobs is not helping the people who need help recovering from the crash, but the Repubs use those as markers of a robust economy. Also, though deficit cutting is foolish policy in a recession or depression, the Repubs believe cutting the deficit to be a major sign of good economic policy, and Obama has cut the deficit by 70%.
So according to *their own* measures of sound economic policy, Obama's national policies and the economies of states like CA are doing *waaaay* better than the economy of KS, which has followed the conservative playbook more religiously than any other state.
The obvious conclusion should be that liberal Dem policies in CA are working a whole lot better that conservative Dem policies in KS, but somehow Repubs manage to ignore the self-evident and cling to their tax-cutting, supply-side fundamentalist religion.
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