Does Social Issues matter when deciding your political affiliation?

[The Grand Nudger]

It can seem like that on the national level, or if you're not keenly aware of everything that the government is doing or funding. It's certainly a huge difference between the parties...but....let me give you an example of two ways to increase strawberry production in a local area. One stereotypically liberal, the other stereotypically conservative.

In the first - a local council identifies the need, and then establishes a project management group to secure public funding. That funding secured (either by hitching to an existing grant or writing a new one) the project management group acquires the land, has the infrastructure built, finds a farm manager, and hires farm labor. From here on out, the management group is a marketing and procurement team. Seeing as how every dime in this venture is a public dime, it's a non profit - the goal of the operation is to produce just enough revenue to offset the operating cost. The operation continues for as long as the public funding holds.

In the second - state and federal agencies aggressively pursue relationships with existing producers, offering them technical and financial assistance in the form of extension agents, contracted specialists, targeted cost sharing, and loans of first convenience. Seeing as how this is private industry the goal is to increase profit. They'll continue for as long as anyone owns and operates them.

I'm leaving alot out, I just wanted to give you the basic summary. Boiled down, if the government decides that there aren't enough berries..the liberal model is the government owns and operates a berry farm, the conservative model sees the government working to increase the yields of private berry farmers.