“Foodstamp vote” is a dogwhistle to the Republican base that the you-know-who’s are getting a handout they don’t deserve.
I know a lot of people on this board don’t (and shouldn’t) take Ayn Rand’s analysis of capitalism seriously, but let’s not forget a lot of folks on the right do. They want to associate Obama with the “moochers” and “parasites”; inflammatory rhetoric like this is their method; don’t look for any objective logic behind it.
I agree to an extent, but I am genuinely curious to know whether there are any numbers to back it up, even if those numbers are then wantonly misinterpreted in order to give credence to a politically convenient conspiracy theory.
Reminds me of that quote that’s been going around for the past few years: “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
I’ll take curtain number one, Monty.
Not that I buy into this theory but you seem to have it backwards. Since the economy is in the shitter Then people on government benefits would vote for those more willing to hand them out. No need to tank the economy to get the desired effect. This would be capitalizing on a down economy.
Funding the military is not the same thing as going to war. You can have a very strong, well funded peacetime military and still get the military vote. One could argue that going to war could piss off all those military people.
Slightly miffed beige dudes.
Suppose, just suppose, it is absolutely true. What then?
Were these people potential Republican voters who are being enticed away? I can hear the Romney campaign, “Damn! Just when we had the welfare queen vote sewed up, along comes Obama and steals them away! Curse him and his nefarious ways!”
Well, the theory as described in the OP is that he’s trying to get more people on food stamps, not to just capitalize on those who are already there. One way, which I hadn’t really considered, would be to make eligible people aware of the program, and to get them to enroll. The other, which first occurred to me, was to make more people eligible. That would mean tanking the economy, which is traditionally not a good strategy for re-election.
As I hear it, Congress came within a whisker of passing a “No Food Stamps for Cadillacs” provision, but General Motors threw a fit. A lot of Dems have auto union support, a lot of Pubbies own stock, so the bill quietly died in committee.
And thus are we ruled.
But in order to expand military funding, a credible threat must be established. Otherwise conservatives will turn back to their copy of Bastiat or Mises decrying war for economic reasons.
This is a joke, right? You don’t really believe this, right?