QUESTION:: WHY DOES THE MIDDLE CLASS VOTE AGAINST ITS INTERESTS?

you're a poopity head...

I gotta go work now.

Sacred Cow: Something which cannot be tampered with, or criticized, for fear of public outcry.

I think it's funny you call gun control a sacred cow. Aren't guns the sacred cow?

Abortion is interesting too - there's plenty of criticism, and outcry from both sides. That's probably the only one in your list a mainstream politician can be pro or anti without significant fallout across the board.

I'd go further than churches and just say religion. Who is the most powerful openly atheist politician in the USA?

Is every tax break a loophole? Like the interest deduction on a home mortgage? Of course, below some level, the interest deduction isn't worth taking when you have to itemize to get it, and lose the standard deduction at the same time.

This affects the discussion because when Romney et al discuss taxes, they just discuss the federal tax rate and say things like "the poor pay no taxes" but that is not true at all. With the exception of income taxes all other taxes are regressive, hitting harder the lower your income level. Asking the wealthy to pay more in income taxes is not "punishing the rich", it is asking them to pay on a percentage basis closer to what the middle class pays. The idea that added tax is a punishment is also pretty silly when you consider the impact of taxes. Romney could pay an extra half million in taxes and not even notice it was gone. A lower middle income family would really feel the pinch of $500/year. The reality is if we want to have a military, roads, power grids, environmental protections, law enforcement, school teachers, etc the government (at all levels) needs money and that money is going to come from us. We don't have enough now, so what are we going to do? The states have generally answered that question by raising sales taxes and hidden fees like gas taxes and utility surcharges. Those slam the poor and slow the economy since those taxes come right out of disposible income and therefore reduce non-government spending. (The last time I was in "low tax" Alabama, I stopped in a restaurant for breakfast and was stunned at the 12% sales tax rate.) Raising income taxes on the upper brackets (say back to Clinton levels) pulls in money without damaging the economy. If Romney pays more taxes, it doesn't impact his spending at all. He can still have essentially whatever he wants (except the White House). The opposite is also true. If you give Romney a nice tax break, he won't spend an additional dollar. It just goes into his bank account. That is why Obama reduced the SS tax rate from 6.2% to 4.2%. It produced a small increase in money at the lowest levels of the economy where people would spend it and generate growth. (Bush's answer was one time payments to people and analysis of the results showed that instead of spending it, they used it to pay down debt, not to stimulate growth.) To sum this all up, taxes are essentially a zero sum game. We are going to collect in agregate X dollars. If we reduce the amount we collect from the wealthy, we must increase the amount we collect from the poor and middle class. If "the relief of income tax for the poorest of us is a good thing" then increasing their tax burden is not. Asking the wealthy to pay a higher percentage is neither punitive nor unreasonable, it's just common sense.

Actually I specifically said Fox news and glen beck viewers, but I get your point.

I don't know about every swing voter or republican, but where I live in south western KY, there are an awful lot of fox news republicans so to speak. I hear them every time I go out or visit my in-laws and most of them are middle class and/or receive some kind of government benefit. I realize that is anecdotal and not really proof of anything.

However, according to most studies, the states with the most people receiving government assistance are states who vote republican. Which goes to farmerman's point of why the middle class votes against their own best interest.

here is one

Good question. I suppose everything that skews a straight percentage rate is a loophole. So, the percentages begin to be critically important. You shouldn't have to hire someone to figure this stuff out. Of course, those who can't afford to hire a professional lose...again.

I'd like the guesswork and elite control to end.

...depends on how much higher - and what that amounts to.

To me, anyway.

I favor returning to the Clinton/Bush senior rate and if we are at war, there should be a war kicker for everyone to support the effort.

There are 88 pages of instructions on how to fill out the standard short form, 1040A.

Just a little factoid that always makes me chuckle.

Irish(FearTheIRS)K

I did mean guns...the right to bear arms.

Disagree about religion. Christianity and Judaism are fair game, and Islam is among a few religions attacked on a regular basis. Try to tax one of them though...

The point is - try to take power from any of these - you know what I mean.

Yeah I get it Lash.

Was reading a piece this morning from Gary Youngeabout the change in opinion about globalisation in the republican base (65% approval a decade ago to 32%) and how counter intuitive support for Romney is from white working class men who've seen their livelihoods threated by the neoliberal globalism their party seeks to extend.

The piece's underlying thesis is that the right is seeking to interpret the country's woes as primarily coming from abroad - immigrants, Islam, foreigners and foreign trade. And carefully engineered statements, like Sununu saying Obama needs to learn to be an American, Romney saying Obama's philosophy 'in some respects foreign to the American experience', that Obama seeks inspiration from the 'capitals of Europe' whereas 'we look to the cities and small towns of America.' It's probably the best election strategy open to them.

Did you know twice as many republicans believe Obama is not American as did in 2008? (about a third).

So hyper-patriotism is ramped up as anglo-saxon americans fear their country is in decline. (That fear is shared across the political spectrum). Younge says for the right the word 'foreign' is now 'an epithet, a slur wilfully blurring the distinction between non-American, un-American, liberal, non-christian and non-white'.

So in answer to the original question. Fear is why the middle class votes against its interests.

Interesting though, the new "Young" Republicans are seemingly back to a more Dwight Eisenhower mold, where extreme social bullshit espoused by the Conservatives and the teabaggers are no longer a driver .
The ultra Conservatives are more of a VietNam war through "Desert Storm Era".A number of the teabaggers are ex skinheads who have populated the Conservative ranks with a "kinder gentler" racism and antsemitism.

What is a "kinder gentler" anti-Semitism? Going to a Jewish dentist, and acting polite, yet still avoiding all other Jews?

You forgot the biggest sacred cow of all Lash - corporations

Or, not smirking/gawking when an Orthodox Jew passes?

She did stick business in the list.

a"kinder gentler" antisemitism and racism iswhere theConservatives (usedabe Skinheads" now only sing songs extolling their own kind . They dont engage (publically) with racists terms and antisemitic slurs.

Where do you get twice as many Republicans believe Obama isn't American? It just doesn't sound quantifiable. I can definitely understand people with a proclivity to dislike him assigning his healthcare program as "European," or socialist-leaning - easily translated to not American or the ever popular anti- or un-American.

I think attempting to turn foreign or this other verbiage into some sinister epithet is goofy, though.

Our country IS on the decline. I don't visualize a bunch of Chicken Littles running about - I think the economists and the rest of us can ably see that we are in a mess, and as experts report, there are no easy solutions. In these cases, hyper-partisans collect in bars, political war rooms, online political websites, and just about anywhere else two people stand still long enough in order to find a way to blame the other party.

I think we've been irresponsibly personally and collectively, and we will suffer for it in the same categories.

Fear is not exclusive to the GOP. I think when people, such as yourself, fall on some really simple, insulting reason for why a mass votes, you are REALLY insulting a lot of people and yourself.

"They don't like me cause they're stupid."
Perhaps a little objective self-assessment can show you your part in how they vote. But most of the Democrats or Democrat supporters here refuse to analyze weaknesses in their party or their candidate. They refuse to give credence to any values or realistic concerns of members of the other party.

They all just must be stupid.

Frightening to imagine such intelligent people seeing the world in stark black and white terms.

It's pretty simple: Their aspirations are for upward mobility.

The majority of the Lower Class may be just fine with their economic status (barring a Lotto win), but the folks you would cement in a certain ecomomic class to suit your politics are not playing ball.

This country is much better off having a populace that aspires to economic success than one which accepts a place defined for them by Liberals.

Then why have the Oligarchs severely reduced the actual percentage and size of a "middle class"/
I think the teabaggers are buying into some vast hot of **** from the leaders of the GOP/

WHEN has "trickle down " worked?