[AnimalMuppet]

Politicians magically decide to ignore the needs of their constituents whenever they think they can get away with it, unless they're saints - and not many saints are politicians.

The better question might be, why do they think they can get away with it? Why do they get away with it?

(By the way, note that this is not just a problem with one party...)

[brundolf]

Whenever they can get away with it and it's in their best interest (thanks to lobbyists). If they don't get anything out of it, they may as well take the free goodwill from voters.

[AnimalMuppet]

Yeah, maybe I'm too cynical, but I suspect that there's always some lobbyists willing to make it worth any politician's time to do what's not in the voters' interest.