I’d bet the perceptions are rather murky. I’d guess that most of the people who would get hurt by Republican fiscal policy have convinced themselves that the olicies will help them like the Republicans claim.
There was an article in the Times about trying to sign people up for ACA in West Virginia. Lots who would benefit greatly from insurance refuse because they got convinced that that old Obamacare will hurt them. How would you classify them?
Social issue are much harder to obfuscate for very long, and in any case there are still the anti-abortion for you types but it is okay for me.
Perhaps the growth in support for SSM comes from it being harder to claim that there is harm. The religious objection will always be there, but the secular objection is harder to sustain.
I must’ve missed this back when this started. This message board and similar places online are the only places where I’ve met Republicans that don’t put the social issues way above the financial issues. The only financial issue that anyone seems to care about is Obamacare and the insurance mandate.
The few people I know who do seem to have a truly conservative financial policy are those “Both parties are crooks” types.
Most Evangelical Protestants voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976. Most voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Jerry Falwell told those people that a man who grew up in Hollywood, who seldom went to church, and who had divorced his first wife was a true Christian, and that Jimmy Carter was not. They believed him.
Since 1980 the religious right has been important part of the Republican coalition.
The Republicans get away with their fiscal policy because of the enduring delusion among the rank and file that tax cuts for the rich generate so much economic growth that it is not necessary to cut Social Security and Medicare. No amount of contrary evidence dispels this delusion.
It gets even more complicated. For instance, I have a cousin who’s Republican in part because he doesn’t like the current welfare system. But the specific changes he’d like to see is that he’d like welfare to come with birth control provided and mandatory job skills training. I have no idea why he thinks that any Republican politician at all would support either of those.
Well, yes, I tried to explain that to him. Still, there’s nothing in his plan that I (or most other Democrats) would object to. Take that plan and toss in a return of the WPA, and it’d be a liberal’s dream.
