I found this article yesterday, which provides some data to explain why "Get the government out of my Medicare!" somehow managed to become a Tea Party slogan.
The answer: racists. (Sorry.)

There is a correlation between racism and opposition to welfare for the poor (because those lazy brown people are stealing my hard-earned dollars).

There is a correlation between racism and being white and old.

And then, old people are on Medicare.

So in the middle of the Venn diagram, you get "Get the government out of my Medicare!"

Which also explained why Romney and Ryan could never explain where all their budget cuts would come from. And unfortunately, this is why it's going to be really difficult for the Republicans to change their position on immigration even though a lot of them are starting to understand the demographic necessity of it.

One of the things I find interesting about that article is that it postulates that the reason the GOP wants to cut welfare is racism and then mentions at the end of the article that most welfare recipients are white. This is used to demonstrate that the GOP is being less than intelligent in their reasoning. Has it occurred to the article's author that maybe the lack of enthusiasm for welfare by the GOP is really about personal responsibility? or the lack of it? I am sure that there are those in the GOP that want to cut welfare because of racism and that there are those on the Dems that want to promote it because it ensures a block of votes. I do not think that either position is the mainstream of either party and yet these positions are touted by the opposing party as speaking points to vilify the other constantly. It's also frustrating to me that being white and old seems to automatically label you racist. It is just as wrong as being labeled a criminal for being young and black. Racism is still alive and well today despite the efforts of many of all ethnicities to stop it. I just wish that racism against whites would be condemned as vigorously as racism against non-whites is.

I'm not sure you're reading the article quite right, chaosman. The article says that there is a correlation among voters between racism and opposition to social welfare programs. It also notes a correlation between age and racism. From this, and the fact that older white men are the core voting bloc of the Republican Party, it notes that it will be difficult for that party to reverse its position on social welfare programs because to do so would damage their support from their base.

It notes that the correlation between racism and opposition to social welfare programs is irrational because the majority of social welfare recipients are white (although it isn't clear to me that this makes it irrational: a larger proportion of social welfare recipients are non-white than their proportion in the general population). This statement says that racist opponents of social welfare programs are irrational. It doesn't say that the Republican Party is being less than intelligent in their reasoning.

Don't blame the messenger for the fact that the vast majority of racist opponents of social welfare vote for the Republican Party. And don't confuse correlation with causation. It doesn't matter what the cause of the opposition to social welfare programs is for the purposes of this article's discussion. Besides, "personal responsibility" is tough to quantify.

Not everyone who opposes social welfare program is a racist. I doubt even a majority of them are.
Likewise, not everyone who is old and white is a racist.

However, there are racists out there. These racists tend to be old and white* because their views were formed decades ago. They also tend to overwhelmingly oppose social welfare programs, except for the ones that they personally use. There's enough of them to produce a statistical correlation, and enough of them to twist the Republican platform into self-contradictory pretzels. If Romney and Ryan were being consistent in their philosophy, they would propose cuts to all social welfare programs including Social Security and Medicare which are by far the biggest items of expenditure on the budget except for the military. But they don't dare drive away the old white racists whose definition of "personal responsibility" only applies to Those People. If they were willing to kick the old white racists to the kerb, they could attract more Latino votes and be more philosophically consistent in promoting personal responsibility and balancing the budget. But they calculated that they couldn't afford to take that risk. They're like a dog that doesn't dare offend the fleas.

(Although as Grillick said, I don't think the racists are being irrational because the population that relies on anti-poverty programs is less white than the general population, even if they are still majority white.)

* I'm sure there are also old black racists, old brown racists, and old Asian racists, but there aren't enough of them to form a voting bloc.

It seems to me that irrationality is more correlated with racism than opposition to social welfare. One can have perfectly rational reasons for opposing social welfare, or at least social welfare as currently implemented. Racism is fundamentally irrational.

Hating other races is irrational. But if your starting point is that you're an irrational arsehat, then opposing anti-poverty programs because the poor are disproportionately unwhite, is unfortunately, quite rational. Especially if you don't mind sticking it to the poor whites who also rely on said programs because those guys are probably methheads anyway.

This is not to say that there aren't other, perfectly valid reasons for wanting to reduce spending on anti-poverty programs. I am not saying that Republicans are all racist. I'm saying that when they stop pandering to the racists, they'll be able to follow their principles coherently.

Let's see the proof.

Romney blames election loss on Obama "bribing" ethnic minorities with welfare.

*headdesk*

At least Bobby Jindal told him to stuff it.

How's this for proof?

Pandering to racists (The Southern Strategy) was an deliberate election policy of the Republicans starting under Nixon in the 1960s. Lee Atwater, Ronald Reagan's political consultant, said this in 1981:



The thing is that Atwater believed that by doing this, he was helping make the Republican party less racist, which I suppose it was becoming on the surface. But he was still quite aware that what he was doing was appealing to racist whites by proposing policies that disproportionately hurt blacks.

But 1981 was 30 years ago. Hasn't the influence of racism faded away yet? Unfortunately, it's been statistically shown that racist conservatives are much less likely to vote for Democrats than non-racist conservatives. This was in 2005.
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the insinuation is that the entire GOP is promoting policies based on race. While I'm sure that there are racists in the party I doubt that is their entire reason for existing. Heck I would say that the Democrats are far more racist than the GOP.

... based on... what? Their promotion of Affirmative Action?

Based on their history.

Also they tend to break everything down based on race. The democrats and supporters always seem to be the first people to point out how racist a policy is even if there is no basis for it. They look for it where there is none. I would say they are projecting.

You completely ignored the Lee Atwater quote, didn't you? It may be 30 years old but the parts of "states rights" and "cutting taxes" are front and center cries of the modern Republican/Tea Party. Projecting racism onto Democrats and claiming they are are the ones projecting? Sorry, but that kind of Rush Limbaugh style b.s. won't fly.

1. The Tea Party, which is not a party at all, started as a protest movement against taxes. Most of the current "tea party" candidates merely absconded the title and are nothing more than establishment republicans.

2. Lee Atwater was a racist ass. However, him being a racist ass does not translate to, the republicans are all racist because they espouse states rights or cutting taxes. His tactics during the elections and as RNC chair were deplorable. He was a propogandist and was always talked in spin. (yes I read his quote, I also watched the documentary about him some years ago.)

3. The democrats were the party of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and now the party of enslaving everyone, not just people of color, to the government. (although the republicans don't seem to mind people being enslaved to the government they are not leading the charge.) But that gets conveniently forgotten about just because president Johnson decided to get behind the civil rights act. The republicans pushed for civil rights reform for years but were stonewalled by the democrats since the civil war. The republicans were formed from the abolishinist portion of the Whig party primarily.

4. Forcing people and/or companies to hire people based on their ethinicity to meet legal requirements is a racist policy.

5. The democrats and their mouth pieces at CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN just love to say that when republicans talk about those issues say they are using code words for racism. Hate to break it to you, but race is not always what it's about, but saying that it is instantly puts people on the defensive. It is a propaganda tactic that seems to work very effectively though. Seemed they learned Atwater's lessons pretty well.

I remember when the Tea Party first started well enough to recall how they called themselves Teabaggers without realizing the slang meaning of the term. It was an astroturf movement from the very beginning.


So it's pure coincidence today's Republican leadership champion policy ideas others of the past used to espouse for racist reasons?


This is just sad. You are willfully blind if you can't see that both the Republican and Democratic parties are not the same as they were back then. Yes, Lincoln and MLK were Republicans. Yes, the Dixiecrats were racists. That was decades in the PAST. We are talking about the PRESENT.


Balancing out the effects of racism is not racism. Race based affirmative action may not be needed as much as it was before but racism is not dead. We could argue if class based affirmative action would do more good these days but the right doesn't advocate that. They advocate getting rid of these considerations all together.


And now the ever present cry of LIBRUL MEDIA (even if you didn't write the words, instead listing the networks). Just because Fox News is run by a man who was a central character in the plans to create a deliberately pro Republican news channel does not mean all the others are in the bag for the Democratic party. Lazy and sensationalist does not equal liberal.

Dog-whistle politics is a very real phenomenon. Once again, is it pure coincidence the right keeps using language that appeals to racists?