This does not surprise me.
GREENWICH, Conn. — You know you’re in a different kind of town when the signs against drunk driving show a line drawn through a Martini glass to which the artist thoughtfully added a stirrer. Greenwich, Conn., is one such town.
Greenwich is home to billionaire hedge-fund managers, private-equity kings and corporate chieftains, as well as ordinary multi-multimillionaires. Interviewing people here requires leaving phone messages with au pairs and catching folks between board meetings.
You’d think that Greenwich would be solid Bush-loving turf — what with all those tax cuts for the rich. It is not. The voters are roughly 40 percent Republican, 40 percent unaffiliated and only 20 percent Democratic, but Bush won the town by only a sliver in 2004, even though his father grew up here.
The political shift toward Democrats has been noted in wealthy suburbs from Seattle to Philadelphia. In 2006, an amazing 63 percent of voters making from $150,000 to $200,000 chose Democratic candidates. Even those making over $200,000 favored Democrats, albeit by a small margin.
Affluent eastern towns like Greenwich have very little in common with the party of Tom DeLay and Karl Rove. In my opinion, the Republican Party has more thoroughly regionalized itself than the Democrats ever did. Christopher Shays is the sole remaining New England Republican in the House of Representatives. Fairly soon, Judd Gregg and Olympia Snowe many be the only remaining New England Republicans in the Senate. And this trend is bleeding down into upstate New York, New Jersey, the eastern half of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. These are affluent areas that used to vote on crime and taxes. They’re turning to Democrats in droves.
Molly Ivins wrote about the two kinds of republican women, the country-clubbers and the wingnuts, and how the two groups loathed each other.
I expect you’re right, and the takeover of the republican brand by the lower class religious fanatics have simply horrified the traditional conservatives.
Also, the moneyed class understands a bit better why we need immigration, why abortion might be a useful thing to keep around, why getting government into the health insurance business might be good for profits, and why paying attention to global warming might keep their summer house in Martha’s Vineyard from floating out to sea.
As long as the capital-gains tax gets abolished…
4 out of 5 ain’t bad.
O/T can I post a third diary today? Please? It’s a good one, so good you’d want to front page it (say how about Abernathy on the front page I had to do math and everything). But this one slams the WaPo real good. Huh?
I’ll give you a special dispensation if you put a note on the top asking people not to recommend it until after midnight. You’ve already got two on the list and it would be fair to others. Is that a deal?
Deal! thanks.
It’s up.
The Republican residents of Greenwich, just a few miles from me, are more like the Rockefeller Repugs of old. Ideology doesn’t seem to be their thing. I suspect that it’s more about access.
Well guilt has its place in politics as well as infidelity. Just don’t mess with the loopholes, or the 15% capital gains tax. Know of any Democratic candidate of note who has even mentioned it?
Waiting and listening.