Not so. To ascribe the shift solely to "values" is to employ party-line logic - which is entirely specious. The muddling of the 2004 election is well documented (but vehemently denied by conservatives): swift boat liars, 9/11 fears, and Rove's smear machine all combined to give Bush advantage. The "mandate" that Bush claimed is a fiction, albeit one that he can hardly be blamed for embracing.

Further, anyone that's sat through an Ethics/Values/Morals 101 class in college (even hungover) is aware that the application of values is by no means confined to what political junkies would like to believe they are. People in exit polls who say that "values" played the number one role in their choice are scarcely indicitive of the whole. After all, if someone votes for "economic issues", they clearly "value" such issues above others (including social issues which traditionally fall under the purview of plastic societal norms rather than federal law).

One should always keep in mind what the primary (or at least a very major secondary) purpose of Social Security was back in the late 1930s: To bribe people to stay out of the labor force and thereby "reduce" unemployment. It became fundamentally irrational for wives (and yes it was exclusively wives back then) to go to work.

One curious political ramification of this was that radical liberal feminists were one of the few ardent groups opposing the spousal benefit, since it compelled women not to empower themselves by earning their own income.

Oh, and of course gays, even Massachusetts-married gays, are denied spousal benefits under federal DOMA.

Sorry, wrong thread. Oops.