"Which works, policies or right or left?" is how the New York Times teased, on the front of its Sunday Review section, an article claiming that the liberal policies of Minnesota's Democrat-Farmer-Labor governor, Mark Dayton, have been more successful than the conservative policies of Wisconsin's Republican governor, Scott Walker.
There's a question that any regular Times reader could guess the answer to. The problem with the analysis is that it avoids mention of other states in which conservative policies have been successful, such as California or Florida. Even if the focus of the article is the Midwest, how about Indiana, or Michigan? The Times article talks a lot about spending on K-12 education. Is the payoff for increased education spending really that fast in terms of job creation? Neither one of these policies have been in place long enough to see much in the way of results. The Times article makes much of a Forbes list of the "best states for business." But there are other such lists. One issued by the Tax Foundation puts Wisconsin at 43 and Minnesota at 45, showing that neither state is particularly business-friendly and that there isn't much difference between the two.