Keep toting that water Rick.

That’s a pretty obscure comment - even coming from a nitwit like you.

What exactly is your criticism? That I don’t care about deficits? That the government should indeed write a tax code that attempts to coerce people into acting or behaving a certain way?

You’re too stupid to address any of the points I made, too dumb to argue intelligently about anything I’ve written. So you leave some obscure comment and fail to engage because you’re too ashamed that the issues and arguments are beyond your capacity to respond.

That’s ok - I’m sure you can find some site worthy of your intellect and acumen. Try Romper Room.

ed.

Henry Hyde moaning about the babies comes to mind, as your people vote over and over again for politicians who assure you THEY will be the ones to finally end abortion. So you overlook their lack of fiscal restraint and votes against things like extending unemployment insurance because of **the babies**, moan, wail.

You’d really like health insurance at reasonable rates, no rescission or pre-existing condition clauses, but you dislike gays marrying more than your health so you vote for the firebrand who will protect marriage while make do with no coverage, one illness away from catastrophe.

You’d go find Bin Laden yourself in the hills of Pakistan if you could, but since you can’t you vote for the meanest sounding war hawk you can, never mind he’s a global warming denialist and believes the Earth is 4,000 years old.

So yes, people vote the GOP for a lot of narrow, and to my mind stupid reasons, but you do it with your eyes wide open.

Playing elitists off against ordinary voters is indeed, a political club the Republicans use to good effect. And why not when the elitists can’t fathom the above statement? It is as alien a language as Farsi to them, this idea that people actually enjoy individual liberty and won’t trade it for what the liberals believe to be “economic security.”

Some day, someone will take on the task of identifying these so-called “elites” and their real preferences in life, government, and associations. Till then, I think that the concept is far too hazy, sort of like “the poor”, which is quite largely a transient state in the US.

Tell me how to recognize an “elite” when I pass one on the street, meet one socially, or go hunting for one. Just who are they, anyway?

Are they the dreaded popcorn-idea-men intellectuals that Thomas Sowell writes about that want the power to make laws of their popcorn and to experiment on the public with all manner of provisions; are they the wealthy, the high Democratic officials, the professors, the politicos, liberals, Ivy League grads, kooks, some of all of this, or what?

No one seems to want to name names and give bios, so the elites can’t be hunted down effectively, even with bird dogs.

It reminds me of Jeff Foxworthy’s: “You may be a Redneck if….” joke list. You may be an elite if you graduated from Yale, are worth over a million inherited dollars, have the required liberal guilt syndrome, are a frustrated professor of something exotic, write books no one reads, and vote Democratic across the board. (or not!)

(Plea #2)

But a substantial number of people in those groups believe (rightly or wrongly) that their opportunity to advance would be best served by a government which limits its involvement in the marketplace (in a broad sense - not just economics). That is, fewer regulations, lower taxes, etc. Many of these people are OK (again, rightly or wrongly) with a government which legislates to some extent on social issues. Since the Republicans, until recently, limited meddling in the marketplace, that party had the support of those people. In other words, those people WERE voting for their economic interests (again, as they saw them, rightly or wrongly) because they believed their interests were best served by a government which limited meddling.

But at least you’ve half-realized politics is about perception rather than reality.

I must assume this was said as a joke.
All you have to do is google “Obama secede” and you will find hundreds of super patriotic righties who proclaimed it was time to leave the union. (…including the sitting Republican governor of Texas!…)
DEE

1. Fix Social Security for all time, Reagan with a democrat Congress.
2. Illegal immigration problem solved, Reagan with a democrat Congress.
3. Glass-Steagell repealed to bring innovation to banks, Clinton with a republican Congress.

It’s not that the people don’t know their own interests it’s that the proposed legislation often brings counter-productive results, and the voters know it. This is the same reason why voters shrieked when Bush talked about SS reform, immigration reform, and now Obama and healthcare reform. It’s not the issue itself, it’s the ability of Congress and the President to bring reform that won’t make things worse. Right now the voters don’t trust them to do that.