Well, They Hacked Off Everybody Else
You know how you make a Christmas List? I am convinced that Republicans make a tinkle-on list.
They need it in case they forget who to tinkle on next. First it was minorities, then young people with student loans, then it was women, and the next thing you knew a Tea Party Rally looked just like domino night over at Uncle Bub’s Assisted Living Community. It was a bunch of ole white men, carrying their lawn chairs and occasionally drooling.
And now they are losing that!
Seniors are now much less likely to identify with the Republican Party. On Election Day in 2010, the Republican Party enjoyed a net 10 point party identification advantage among seniors (29 percent identified as Democrats, 39 percent as Republicans). As of last month, Democrats now had a net 6 point advantage in party identification among seniors (39 percent to 33 percent).
—More than half (55 percent) of seniors say the Republican Party is too extreme, half (52 percent) say it is out of touch, and half (52 percent) say the GOP is dividing the country. Just 10 percent of seniors believe that the Republican Party does not put special interests ahead of ordinary voters.
I swear by next January, Rand Paul, Louie Gohmert, and Ted Cruz will be barely distinguishable from The Three Remaining Republicans. I kinda hope swords won’t be involved because those boys have a real hard time not hurting themselves.
On the other hand …
Thanks to Llana and Rick for the heads up.
It looks as though the senior citizens are starting to realize that the Republican Party’s method of appealing to young voters is to demonize senior citizens and their Social Security. (It’s got “social” in it, so it must be communism according to the Ted Cruz / Louie Gohmert crowd.)
As more and more people realize that they fall within the definition of “those people”, the more they’ll stop identifying as Republicans.
1i hope the tea party folks just keep blabbin’ away. the more they talk, the more sane and even semi-sane people will walk away. We always need to make sure we counter their message, but i see no reason for progressives to start having fainting spells. Let the tea party people keep going on about Obamacare.blah, blah, blah. Then they can nominate the craziest coot they have and see where that gets them. I’m thinking it won’t be the White House.
2@RepubAnon – let me see if I have this right. When someone pays into a retirement system for 40 years, and then is told by various Republican politicians that their Social Security check is an “entitlement,” and Paul Ryan et al want to change the COLA to reduce those entitlement checks to make the system “more fair” (more fair = lower taxes for wealthy who have plenty of money left over at the end of every month) – – those people might just think the time has come to say skip voting next time? Looks like the Republicans may have figured out how to keep people away from the polls after all, even without needing to strike down provisions of the Voting Rights Act.
3You forgot to mention little kids. Of course little kids can’t vote so they don’t count.
4Hell….THIS senior knew years ago what a crock the GOP is. Now, if I could only convince my conservative relatives here in TN. Maybe when the current president turns white…….;-(
5@ Rick – Not quite… The Republicans seem to think that they can gain votes from young people by cutting Social Security benefits and using the money to give rich people tax cuts. The Ryan Plan seems to be to replace Social Security with a 401(k)-style plan designed to extract large fees from participants and give them to the Wall Street brokers. (As the joke goes: they’re the brokers, we’re the broke-ees.)
This is getting some traction among the young – I’ve heard 30-something colleagues whine about how Social Security won’t be there for their retirement. Fortunately, they also see what’s happening to their 401(k) plans as well.
Spreading disaffection among the young may keep them away from the polls – but angering the old folks (who vote) seems like it isn’t working out so well for the Republicans.
6@ Rick – I should also note that stealing peoples’ pensions to enrich the rich isn’t a new policy. Remember all those leveraged buyouts in the 1980s? Many were funded by borrowing against the target’s “overfunded” pension fund. The speculators would get someone to sign off on a statement that the pension fund had far more money in it than necessary, because the Dow would reach 36,000 in a few weeks.
Funny thing, 20+ years later, when everyone started retiring, those companies that hadn’t already been sucked dry and thrown away like a can of cheap beer filed bankruptcy to get out from under the now “underfunded” pensions. The companies all blamed greedy workers who expected the speculators to honor their obligations – forgetting to mention the speculators who had looted those funds so long ago.
7Marge Wood, a frequent commenter on this site, has been going to nursing homes and assisted-living centers for YEARS, making sure that folks have proper IDs and voter registrations, and that they know how to vote even if they cannot get out to their polling places. She’s good as GOLD! There are very few seniors here in Eureka Springs who are not already VERY involved in local and national politics, so I am not active in that regard, but for those of you in places that have lots of nursing/ assisted-living centers, you might well follow her lead!
8These teapublicans sure aren’t getting any more popular, at least with regular, sane folk. In the slightly altered words of Miss Molly “They are about as popular as a whore trying to get into the SMU School of Theology.”
9Katie J, I’ve also heard of cases (a friend’s mother’s nursing home) where volunteers filled out the old dears’ voting info and absentee ballots and isn’t it funny how they all voted Republican, some for the first time in their lives….
Not saying that Marge Wood would ever pull anything like that, but some would. They need watching.
10Republicans love America; they just seem to hate about 50% of the people that live in it.
Jon Stewart
11My own particular Senior Citizen fell out of love with that bunch starting with the Reagan Administration. He was Reduced in Grade (RIGged) and then told he could still keep working in the unit at only a slightly lower pay grade. All he had to do was to go and apply for the job currently held by someone else. That job had to be as close as possible in certain respects to the one he just lost. His bossr, a Reagan appointee, aimed him at a woman! He was so disgusted he literally couldn’t eat for a few days. Everything tasted bitter to him. Then the Bush II Administration tore it completely for him, especially when Shrublet kept signing statements that he would not support the law he just signed and so on and so on. My Senior Citizen turned out to be a member of legions of former Republicans, an awful lot of them working phone banks in the 2008 election for Obama. Yup. All they have to do to cull their own herd is keep acting like they are Divine Right Monarchs.
12The Republicans rush further to the right is like a runaway train; they cannot slam on the brakes and bring it to a standstill. Consquently, it seems this trend will continue, unless we Democrats manage to screw up, big time. But will it snowball so that we long suffering Democrats in Texas and other redneck states prevail, soon, maybe in 2014? Stay tuned!
13If the Repubs do manage to nominate a crazy person in 2016–they escaped by the skin of their teeth in 2012 when they went with Romney, who is merely elitist and corrupt–it will be interesting to see if that’s the last straw for a lot of seniors.
14Rhea: I don’t believe that Marge would ever do anything corrupt, but if she did do, it would have wiped out any advantage the Republicans got out of the “helper” that you described. She’s Yeller Dawg!
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