It is one of the greatest ironies that those with both hands dipped in the federal money pot are the same ones who bitch incessantly about taxes and out of control spending.
A big part of that is a long-held resentment held by the West and South against "Easterners." People from those regions have always complained that Washington is controlled by Wall Street or, more broadly, by East Coast business interests. Yes, they get a lot of benefits from Washington, but many Southern and Western states have historically and/or presently lagged behind the North (Northeast and Midwest) in terms of wealth, education, and quality of life for the average person.
Also, there is the element of racism and nativism driving sentiments against government spending on "welfare queens", or on the poor, etc. As far as taxes go, rural people in general-and the South and West are very rural regions compared to the East Coast-have always had a "Leave Me Lone" attitude on that.
But perhaps the biggest reason is that the South and West have recently been the
boom areas of the country. Entrepreneurs and economic growth are valued above all else in such areas. So what were once rural, agrarian "leave me lone" sentiments have morphed into suburban/exurban, "free market=good/gubmint=bad" sentiments.
In Minnesota, the most right-wing areas are the exurbs of the Twin Cities...which is where people perceive free-market capitalism to have worked wonders for them, and government to be an enemy, not a friend. The cosmopolitan urban areas are where people see the benefits of government stabling the economy, and the rural areas are pretty traditional "leave me lone" areas (except in places like Minnesota where unions and organized politics-DFL in Minnesota's case-have major strength, or rural areas where whites are a minority, or places like New England where the rural areas have well-educated and high-income residents). That pattern is true in much of the country.
