Prairie Empire

Thanks to Richard Nixon, Watergate and an ill-timed pardon in September of the 1974 mid-term election year, the 94th Congress elected more Liberal Democrats to both houses than at any time since the Goldwater landslide loss exactly one decade earlier.

In the following election, the Democrats not only recaptured the Whitehouse but increased their hold in each house by one seat-- 61 Senators, 292 House of Representatives. It proved to be their high-water mark.

Despite the achievements of the 1976 election, a troubling trend emerged-- Liberal Democrats from states with conservative values were no longer safe, automatic re-elections. The western states of Utah and Wyoming led the trend as both turned out 18 year incumbents who had never even come close to losing an election. In Utah, an insular state long suspicious of outsiders, a little-known attorney who had only moved to the state recently managed to oust Frank E. Moss even though he filed the last day and begin the campaign behind by 30 points. His name was Orrin Hatch.

In Wyoming, a congressman with high name recognition also started the campaign behind, but managed to defeat Gale McGee by a convincing margin. What had been the clincher to ensure routine re-election to senators like McGee and Moss was their power to deliver pork and government transfer payments. Their constituents were warned that replacing these Senators, while it might send someone more ideologically in tune with the voters to Washington, would also risk the perks of pork which their power had always delivered. This argument had always sold before. In 1976, it did not.

The elections of Senators Hatch and Simpson were to provide the only major consolation prizes for the Republicans in the 1976 election. Within four years, however, the Republicans not only recaptured the Whitehouse, but now had 53 seats in the Senate and control of one house for the first time since 1955. In 1980, Liberals were shocked to see the powerful and always safely re-elected Senator Frank Church of Idaho, among others, join the list of the defeated. It would be six long years before we'd retake control of the Senate.

Creating safe districts for house incumbents had always been less challenging for our Liberal allies. Urban decay, concentration of minorities and other fractures in society could be carefully exploited to ensure safe house seats. The challenge was to recreate the safe Senate seats now like states like Wyoming, Utah and Idaho had decided that ideological similarity to their constituents was more important than Federal dollars.

Redistricting was not an option, especially for small states. We Liberals had learned that by carefully exploiting class divisions and Federal payments, conservative constituents could be bribed to routinely select Liberal Senators and Representatives to further the concentration of power at the national level.

West Virginia, despite its traditional values, would provide the model for making Senate seats for Liberals. One or more poor states with little or even negative population growth became the model for the next target-- the Dakotas.

If generous Federal payments could make a conservative population dependent on Federal payments and alternative opportunities in the private sector could be limited, enough people could be forced to leave the state for better opportunities and those remaining would be so grateful for their daily bread from Washington, another West Virginia could be created at much lower cost. North Dakota, with one aging senator (who later died in office) and one moderate Republican, who generated little enthusiasm among the conservative base, seemed like a perfect first target. South Dakota would follow.

The West Virginia formula proved successful. Both states, despite traditional values and high birth rates, also had large emigration rates.

For North Dakota, 1978 would be the last year a Republican was elected to the house, 1980 the last year a Senator was elected.

The mid-term elections of 1986 saw two Democrats sold to their constituents as conservatives and elected by fairly narrow margins-- Kent Conrad in North Dakota and Tom Daschle in South Dakota. Once safely entrenched in office, they were free to show their true colors because this time also marked an increased exodus of the young, the entrepreneurial types and anyone else who would provide a sufficient voter base to change the new status-quo.

When North Dakota's other aged Senator died in office in 1992, Conrad, who had campaigned on the promise not to seek re-election, resigned to accept the Governor's appointment so his seat could be vacated for his mentor, Byron Dorgan. He likewise has since also been routinely re-elected with token opposition. Dorgan's seat in congress was also filled by a moderate Democrat who likewise is drifting further left and will eventually be as reliable a Liberal vote as the Senators.

South Dakota jettisoned its last Republican Senator in 1996. We are confident that its last Republican, house member John Thune, will eventually join them in extinction. Depopulation of rural areas, like deterioration of central cities, remains a necessary policy to ensure safe legislative districts for Liberals. Our allies may decry this trend even as they contribute to it. It is important to show sympathy for dying rural areas even as we help to euthanize them.

The alternative to this policy can be seen in the rural states further west-- Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. Once dependent to a large extent on Federal payments, these states have not only slowed their out-migration, but have actually seen modest population growth and development. While the most urban of the three, Utah, provides some opportunity to create liberal constituencies by central city deterioration policies, the hostility of the populace to Liberal candidates makes it unlikely in the foreseeable future.

We can compensate for those lost opportunities by completing our takeover of the Dakotas, while spreading to Montana and rural areas of the Great Plains and Midwest. As we do so, these areas will be largely red-lined by businesses considering expansion, further limiting opportunity, increasing out-migration and ensuring that those who do remain are either party loyalists, essential support and service personnel, those dependent on payments from Washington or the minority of businesses too stubborn to leave. As these people are gathered into our cities, we have the additional opportunity gain constituents by centralization while, at the same time, protecting our environment by returning these rural areas to their natural state.

Is this article "tongue-in-cheek" or serious? You decide.
Link to anti-State Church website.

Rural Cleansing.

Core beliefs of the State Church.

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Threat to Rural Depopulation Plans!