The National Journal has an article using neighbors Indiana and Illinois to illustrate the increasingly divergent paths of Red States and Blue States:
After the 2010 election expanded Indiana Republicans' control of the state Senate and provided them a majority in the state House, GOP lawmakers joined with Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels to briskly advance a long list of conservative priorities. Together they adopted tough measures on illegal immigration (including legislation similar to Arizona's controversial enforcement bill); expanded the school-voucher program; limited collective bargaining by teachers; and overrode local restrictions that prevent gun owners from carrying their weapons in many public buildings. To much fanfare, Republicans defunded Planned Parenthood and enacted a raft of constraints on abortion, including a ban on the procedure after 20 weeks of pregnancy—a provision that critics say violates the constitutional right to abortion that the Supreme Court established under Roe v. Wade in 1973.
Two hundred miles to the west, in Springfield, Ill., the Legislature has marched, nearly as rapidly, in the opposite direction. Illinois Democrats have moved aggressively to leverage a 2010 election that maintained their party's control of the state House and Senate and installed Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn for a full term. While devising a budget to salve the desperate fiscal condition, Illinois Democrats made permanent the state's longtime moratorium on the death penalty. Quinn withdrew Illinois from a controversial federal illegal-immigration enforcement plan championed by President Obama, and signed a law that provides undocumented immigrants in-state higher-education benefits, including tax-advantaged savings. In January, the governor approved a civil-union bill that provides same-sex couples spousal rights equivalent to those of heterosexual couples. “It was,” Democratic state Rep. Greg Harris said with studied understatement, “a good year.”
Our system was set up for states to be the "laboratories of democracy" and federalism was designed to let local officials experiment based on their knowledge of local priorities. Indiana doesn't have to be like Nevada, and California doen't have to be like Iowa. Let ideas compete so everybody can see which ones work and which ones don't.
But the authors wonder if the fragmentation of today's "extremist legislation" and the increasing gap between Red and Blue State policies are testing the limits of federalism. It's an interesting debate, but I'm not sure to what end. Even if we agree with them that this is worrisome, the only solution would seem to be more control from Washington and less autonomy for the states, and that solution would be worse than the problem.
