# Do food stamp (EBT) recipients now vote largely for the GOP? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 1, 2014, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-food-stamp-ebt-recipients-now-vote-largely-for-the-gop/682563 "2014-03-01T00:33:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-food-stamp-ebt-recipients-now-vote-largely-for-the-gop/682563/41 "2014-03-02T21:14:26Z")
> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > Um, what? You do realize that “expanding the welfare state” is not actually a Democratic goal? Most of us would greatly prefer that there were no need for welfare, even if we ALSO think that those people who DO need it should have access to it. That’s just crazy talk! It’s like saying you would prefer that your house didn’t burn down AND you think people should have fire extinguishers! ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-food-stamp-ebt-recipients-now-vote-largely-for-the-gop/682563/42 "2014-03-02T21:26:00Z")
> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > Um, what? You do realize that “expanding the welfare state” is not actually a Democratic goal? Most of us would greatly prefer that there were no need for welfare, even if we ALSO think that those people who DO need it should have access to it. Um, then how do you explain the Democratic expansion of the welfare state? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-food-stamp-ebt-recipients-now-vote-largely-for-the-gop/682563/43 "2014-03-02T21:40:57Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Um, then how do you explain the Democratic expansion of the welfare state? I think **Fretful Porpentine** was trying to say that Democrats would prefer there not to be a welfare state, but they think that people in need should have one. When workers do not reap the benefits of their labour, they need help. When jobs are shipped overseas to increase corporate profits, people are out of work and they need help. If profits were shared more equitably with the people who produce those profits, then the welfare state would shrink. They’re not, so it doesn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2014, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-food-stamp-ebt-recipients-now-vote-largely-for-the-gop/682563/44 "2014-03-02T22:58:13Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > If you care more about someone else’s unborn babies than your own babies–the ones you can’t even provide for on your own–then something’s wrong with your brain, sorry. (“You” being no one in this thread, of course) I think a person in that position would probably say that actively killing babies is a greater evil than failing to make adequate provision for them, and tha this is grounds to vote for the more pro-life party. Babies in poor families may not have a great life growing up, but in America at least, they don’t usually die in infancy, so you can certainly make a case that abortion is a bigger deal than the lack of a safety net. (N.B. not an argument that I would agree with, for a variety of reasons, although I am anti-abortion, but it certainly can be made.) Also, the elephant in the room here is that some of the poorest regions of the country are in the deep south, and in those regions voting is mostly racially based- white people in certain parts of the South, both rich and poor, vote predominantly Republican, presumably out of racial identity politics. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-food-stamp-ebt-recipients-now-vote-largely-for-the-gop/682563/45 "2014-03-03T02:14:31Z")
Just plain old fear of change. Its not so much that Obama is black, its that he’s _different_. Poverty entrains pessimism, you are not as likely to seek change if you dread it, if you have no faith that a positive outcome is possible, or even likely. And however miserable your condition, you fear change because you are so sure it would be worse. And, of course, poverty trains apathy, and it is apathy that is the truest enemy of progress, not conservatism. The best conservative recognizes the need for change and urges prudence and caution in going forward. Applied wisely, that sort of conservatism enhances progress, it is a worthy position for argument and negotiation. Alas. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-food-stamp-ebt-recipients-now-vote-largely-for-the-gop/682563/46 "2014-03-03T04:10:29Z")
> [@Ann\_Hedonia](#): > > Data Point > > My mother and brother are on EBT. They voted Republican. Their EBT benefits were gutted. They still haven’t made the connection. Data point: I am recently on EBT and the government recently reduced benefits under a Democrat President. No lie! ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-food-stamp-ebt-recipients-now-vote-largely-for-the-gop/682563/47 "2014-03-03T04:13:20Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I don’t know if anyone has followed him but Kasich, Governor of Ohio, has made himself quite popular in that State by pulling the Compassionate Conservative card. He couches it as being a tax-cutting, pro-business Republican who follows “Christian principles” on helping the poor and et cetera. He’s one of the few Republican Governors to expand Medicaid for the ACA for example. But of course that still has the same problem–how do you genuinely cut taxes and increase spending on social welfare without bankrupting the State? > > In Ohio he does slight of hand, by basically offloading most spending requirements onto local governments, so Ohio has municipal income taxes which have gone steadily up, School District taxes that have gone steadily up, and property taxes that have gone steadily up as counties/municipalities have to absorb spending requirements–but it allows Kasich to steadily chip away at the State income tax and potentially eliminate it at some point (his ultimate goal.) I guess you could do the same at the Federal level and we’d all just see massive increases in our State income taxes. Ha, yes. A wealthy county near where I live recently announced that they cannot afford school bus service anymore…on the heels of a million dollar upgrade to their football fields…average median income in said Ohio county is almost $100,000… ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-food-stamp-ebt-recipients-now-vote-largely-for-the-gop/682563/48 "2014-03-03T04:41:37Z")
Well, how many of those kids actually _use_ the school bus? And how many of those who do are the sort of kids they don’t much want theirs hanging about with? ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-food-stamp-ebt-recipients-now-vote-largely-for-the-gop/682563/49 "2014-03-03T04:47:32Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Well, how many of those kids actually _use_ the school bus? And how many of those who do are the sort of kids they don’t much want theirs hanging about with? Apparently enough to annoy the shit out of soccer moms that now have to drive their 14 and 15 year olds to school before they give them Dad’s Escalade or Hummer for their sixteenth birthday. ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-food-stamp-ebt-recipients-now-vote-largely-for-the-gop/682563/50 "2014-03-03T06:59:43Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Well, how many of those kids actually _use_ the school bus? And how many of those who do are the sort of kids they don’t much want theirs hanging about with? Also, how much is the bus service ‘contract’? What add-ons, or hidden tax/fee is slapped onto the contract? Maybe they’re tired of a redundant, bloated money hole of a crappy bus service. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2014, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-food-stamp-ebt-recipients-now-vote-largely-for-the-gop/682563/51 "2014-03-03T17:06:36Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > The phrase “vote against their own interest” is used quite a bit on these boards. And it almost always means that people (e.g., poor Republicans) vote against the party who wants to give them less stuff. People on SNAP who vote Republican are almost always voting against their short-term financial interest. You’re right that they have interests other than short-term financial. I think they’re also voting against their long-term economic interest, but that’s arguably beyond the scope of this thread. And I suppose there are people willing to starve to death if it means more restrictions burdening their female and/or LGBT fellow citizens. > [@monstro](#): > > I would not vote for a candidate who promised to give a weekly stipend of $1000 to every citizen, even though having an extra $1000 a week sure would be nice. That’s interesting. I wouldn’t vote for a candidate just because they promised a stipend, but I won’t vote agaisnt them because of it. (I do support GBE, but I don’t think a straight-up handout is the way to do it, and in any case that is only one of a number of opinions I hold.) > [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Um, then how do you explain the Democratic expansion of the welfare state? First, you just said they didn’t. Second, expanding the welfare state is not the goal of Democrats, but that doesn’t mean Democrats aren’t willing to do it in pursuit of their economic goals. “It is not the goal of $GROUP to do $THING” is not the same as “it is antithetical to the goals of $GROUP to do $THING.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-food-stamp-ebt-recipients-now-vote-largely-for-the-gop/682563.md?page=2)