Stressed Americans ripe for GOP con (Great Column!)...

[chiburb]

From Andrew Greeley, Chicago Sun-Times...

Snip:

Republicans are the party of the rich, so it seems appropriate that when they are in power they take care of the rich. The irony is that not all Republicans are rich. So the Republican spin merchants must explain their economic decisions in terms that their ''base''--religious fundamentalists, poor white Southerners, alienated workers, hyper-patriots--can accept. Heaven forfend--you should excuse the expression--that the base might understand that money is being taken from them and turned over to the oil billionaires. Even the ''base,'' dimwitted that it is, might not like the reverse Robin Hood tactics of the administration: Take from the poor and give to the rich.

Snip:

They are fooling most of the people most of the time. They hope to fool enough of the people long enough for re-election. And the media, which screamed in outrage when President Bill Clinton lied about his sex life, are not screaming about the fabrications of the Bush administration about taxes, Medicare, work hours, the attack on Sept. 11, and the Iraqi war. Obviously, dishonesty about sex is a worse threat to the republic than dishonesty about war and taxes.

The administration obviously intends to tough it out, just like Nixon did. Maybe it will work. However, at the end of the eight years, the country will be in a terrible economic mess, its civil liberties in tatters, hated by the rest of the world--and probably still fighting a foolish war in Iraq.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel18.html

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

1. scary

I never understood how any working class person could vote Republican.

[cprise]

2. It's worse than that, re: poor & working class

The general flow of Federal funds has been from high-productivity (Democratic) areas to poor, rural Southern areas (Republican). The worsening conditions make their poor white base increasingly desperate and angry (and useful against Liberals, as long as they remain brainwashed)... That's why the rich elite who run the party must push corporatism; If they don't, the corporate world (the MEDIA) would stop protecting them and there could be a tidal wave against the Republicans and the rich in general.

Republican politics looks like a spring that is being compressed more and more, perhaps to the point where their "base" will want blood. When that spring snaps, we better make sure it's not in our direction or we'll wind up living in some cross between Oceania and the Republic of Gilead!