D'artagnan wrote:I don't think the GOP is anti-poor, but I do think the party is selling poor people a bill of goods. As in, "These policies (e.g. tax cuts that benefit the well off) will help you when you have more money."
The American Dream is to have more. I think people buy into a fantasy rather than a realistic approach to a better life...
I think this is well-stated, however, i also think that with notable exceptions such as Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., Republicans became, shortly after the civil war, the party of capitalists. In Lincoln's first term, they were the radicals, the wild-eyed ravers who frightened everyone politically. Lincoln took most of his first term to get them under control, and success by Democrats in the mid-terms sobered Republican party leaders. Lincoln had to work very hard to get re-elected, and the Republicans had a long way to go to begin to appear to be a mainstream party.
But the Grant administration, and the economic boom of the post-war period, when immigrants flooded into the country gave the Republicans the opportunity to set themselves up locally with monied men. This was the era of the great political machines, and the Democratic Party was successfully appealing to immigrants and the disaffected whites of the South, while the Black Republicans of the South were being run out of office, and the South was being lost to Republicans. It was pretty natural for Republicans to become more and more conservative, and to appeal more and more to capitalists, while the Democratic Party went down the long, twisting and bizarre road of attempting (and surprisingly succeeding at) appealing to conservative Southern white racists and rural and urban white radicals in farming and trades unions.
The phenomenon of the "Reagan Democrats," when the Republicans made their first inroads in the South in the history of the party was the signal for Republicans to develop a propaganda of being a party of broad-based appeal. I frankly don't believe that the power brokers in the Republican Party ever gave a rat's ass about the working class, but i do think they finally wised up and saw that they needed to and could appeal to "the little guy."
I heartily agree that they are selling the middle and the working classes a bill of goods.
), made the mistake of thinking, well, but he isnt really that bad, so its just a question of getting the true picture out, and once the efffort is made of showing who he really is, people will come around!