Then why do Republicans tends to fair better at the national level than Democrats or Democrats not fair as well as you would expect them to?
Only looking at the Federal level, since 1980, Republicans have won five out of eight presidential elections (1980, 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004). When it comes to Congress they have had split control four times and outright control six times, whereas Democrats have had split control four times and outright control seven times.*
Those two outcomes fly in the face of the whole “Republicans only care about the rich” mantra. Presumably, there aren’t that many “rich” people in the U.S., so someone who isn’t “rich” votes for Republicans. The question I want to know is what your (preferably the Democrats/liberal leaning folks) opinion as to why this is.
*I’m not including the 107th Congress.
Edit: Also, let’s keep the “Because people are stupid/sheep!” comments to a minimum, okay?
Because they’re willing to lie to create false impressions among the low information public that support their political aims.
Political Aim: Support carbon energy companies.
Lie: AGW isn’t real.
Political Aim: Support large health care insurance providers.
Lie: Death Panels.
Political Aim: Destroy the social safety net.
Lie: Welfare queen, Social Security raises the debt, etc.
I could go on, but I have some work to do. These lies shift public opinion and give Republicans a chance to destroy government, which only amplifies their message that government is useless.
Plus, the Republicans have cornered the market on the religious. People are willing to vote against their own economic well-being if they believe that fetuses won’t be aborted, gays won’t be given equal rights under the law, prayer is allowed in schools, etc. They’d rather be right by God than anything else.
Two responses and two “Because people are stupid!” type responses. Can’t say I’m surprised. :rolleyes:
And here I thought that Catholics were a pretty large portion of the Democratic base.
That, in general, is untrue. If it were true, then Blacks would vote Republican, since they’re more socially conservative, in general, than are White Democrats. As it is, things like gay marriage, abortion, gays, etc. tend to rank towards the bottom on things people care about, and the people who vote solely on those issues constitute a minority of both parties (though, in the case of abortion, it usually nets the Republicans a plus, much the same way gay marriage is probably a boon to the Democrats).
When the lies come the Republican leaders and are amplified by the (non-liberal) media why do you have to assume **Lobohan **is reaching for the “because people are stupid” point?
A political party, no matter how avidly they may pursue their ideological goals, want to get elected. You’re correct that there aren’t enough rich people alone to vote them into power, which means they have to convince the non-rich to support them. In this sense, Republicans “care” very much about the non-rich. They’re the ones who elect them.
If you accept that idea along with the premise that Republicans want ultimately to serve the interests of the wealthy (which I think is true to some extent, but is certainly debatable), the next question is how to convince those who aren’t rich to support an agenda that may not benefit them personally?
People more up on the subject than me have said a lot about that. Everyone wants to be rich and will support policies they think will benefit them in the future when their ship comes in, etc. I think Republicans are fairly successful at doing this.
“Muslims are out to get you!”
“Mexicans are out to get you!”
“Gays are out to get you!”
“Unions are out to get you!”
“Atheists are out to get you!”
“Poor people are out to get you!”
Republicans have successfuly waged a war of fear and division.
Leaving aside the Electoral College and the Supreme Court, more people voted for the Democrat than the Republican in 2000. 1984 and 2004 had incumbents running against challengers and 1988 was virtually the same with Bush running as four more years of Reagan.
So your claims of popular approval pretty much rest on the 1980 election.
The fact that there are not that many rich people is irrelevant. They have convinced people to vote against their own interests. The Repubs appeal to single issue voters to vote for them with promises that they would protect their beliefs. The gun people, the anti abortion people, the tea baggers , and people who just want no taxes.
The Repubs are very well funded and get their message out 24 hours a day. They have Fox broadcasting righty bias all day long. They have radio stations across the country pushing Rush and other rights. They finance " think tanks" that get play on their TV stations convincing some, they are intellectually based. They control the guests on Sunday Morning political shows.
They tell the religious right what they want to hear. They scare the old people .
As you said, everyone wants to be rich. If that’s the case then, as you said, they’ll support policies in the future that will benefit them when their time comes. Shouldn’t that mean, therefore, that everyone should be voting Republican?
Excuse me? If you’re going to play this convoluted game, then you need to also discredit the 1992 election since GWB Sr. was an incumbent running against a challenger (or do they only count when the incumbent loses?) and the 1996 election, since that was also a Democratic incumbent running against a challenger. You don’t get to throw out some elections because it suits you to do so.
(Although, I said nothing of popular approval. I said “presidential election”, which isn’t won by popular vote.)
Ultimately, the liberal mindset boils down to the implications in this post. Essentially liberals take it as a given that since a person isn’t rich themselves that they should be against rich people. When that theory doesn’t pan out, they make conclusions like “That voter obviously must think he’ll be rich someday.” instead of the true reason- that it’s wrong to screw over someone just because they’re rich.
Likewise, they hold to the theory that if someone is poor that the rest of us should actually do something to rectify that. Then when they see people vote against social programs like Medicare and welfare, they rationalize it by saying that people are voting against their own interests instead of seeing the real reason- that keeping their own money in their own pockets is self-interested.
Do I really need to remind you that the Republicans lost the popular vote in 2000? They won the election only because Presidential elections are decided by the Electoral College. Furthermore, you stopped at 1980 because that was a year when the Republicans won. Equally well you could have gone back to 1976. Then it would be possible to say that the Democrats have won the popular vote in 1976, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2008 and the Republicans won the popular vote in 1980, 1984, 1988, and 2004. Or you could have gone back to 1968 and said that the Republicans won 7 and the Democrats have won 6 since then in the popular vote. Or you could have gone back to 1960 and said that the Democrats have won 8 and the Republicans 7 since then. Or you could have gone back to 1952 and said that the Republicans have won 9 and the Democrats have won 8 in the popular vote. Or you could have gone back to 1932 and said that the Democats have won 13 and the Republicans have won 9 in the popular vote. This business of picking one’s period in order to prove one’s point is not useful in figuring out what’s going on.
I think the only thing that it’s really honest to say is that the Republicans and the Democrats have been fairly close in both popular vote totals for President and in the proportion of Congress won for about six decades now.
Y’see? There ya go. Another liberal refusing to understand that not helping poor people is in the interest of the middle class. Another liberal refusing to understand that being middle class doesn’t mean you should be anti-rich.
No, because not everyone is going to be rich. In fact, very few ever will be. Which means if one believes in voting strictly in their own interests, almost nobody should vote Republican.
Many “middle class” people are only a couple missing paychecks or an unexpected expense away from becoming poor. Cite
$2000 reflects the cost of an auto transmission replacement, or an emergency room visit. Only 25% of those surveyed could “certainly” come up with that kind of money on short notice.
No, because you’ll find my post said nothing about the popular vote. I said presidential election, and presidential elections aren’t won based on the popular vote.
No, I stopped at 1980 simply because that’s where we can trace the face of the “modern” Republican party. If I wanted, I could go all the way back to Abraham Lincoln and start counting the number of Republican vs. Democratic presidents, but that would be asinine because the party positions have changed so drastically and the party demographics look strikingly different than what they did as recent as 40 years ago.
[QUOTE=Mach Tuck]
No, because not everyone is going to be rich. In fact, very few ever will be. Which means if one believes in voting strictly in their own interests, almost nobody should vote Republican.
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But you said everyone wants to be rich and will support policies that help them when their time comes. Now you’ve shifted the goal posts. If people are voting on what they want to happen and vote for what would be in their best interests if it happened, in this case becoming rich, then they should vote Republican as per your own logic. If people are going to vote strictly in their own interests, then almost no one would vote Democrat since many of the Democratic policies have little benefit to the middle and upper class. For example, someone who is making $60K per year receives no benefit for extending something like welfare benefits to those who make less than $20K per year.
More importantly, your premise is flawed. You appear to be assuming that any voters who casts a vote for the Republicans is signaling approval of their economic policy as it applies to the various economic classes, and hence that poor and middle class voters voting Republican show that they don’t believe the Republicans favor the rich.
But that’s not how elections work. In an election there are typically two candidates. (Two from the major parties, to be precise.) One will get elected and that candidate will make decisions affecting many things from taxes, spending, foreign policy, appointments, affirmative action, health care, education, environmental issues, and so forth. Each voter selects the candidate that he or she believes will do best overall. Giving the multiplicity of issues, few voters, if any, will ever find a candidate whose positions exactly match their own. Hence, just because Bob votes for Joe does not mean that we can conclude that Bob feels a certain way about Joe’s stance on any particular issue.
(I agree with you that many Democrats project a smug attitude of intellectual superiority, but then again the Republicans generally haven’t been shy about calling us stupid either.)