Why Did Three Million Republicans Stay Home? Could it be they realized the GOP ideology failed them?
Why Did Three Million Republicans Stay Home? Could it be they realized the GOP ideology failed them?
Much is being written about the the high number of Republicans who stayed home and did not come out and vote if not for Romney then against Obama, “the most socialist-leaning, most anti-American president in American history” according to the GOP talking points.
So why did they stay home?
I have been wondering when reality would catch up to the “What is wrong with Kansas” type Republicans who voted against their interests.
Ever since Reagan introduced the faith based economics of “trickle down”, the base has accepted it as scientific certainty that if unions were busted, taxes on the rich were lowered, and Wall Street and industry deregulated and govt shrunk then prosperity by the “job creators” would allow them to take all that money they saved in not paying taxes and following regulations and coddling union workers and trickle it down to the rest of us.
So the Republican base waited and waited. Any day now the rich would give them a raise and employ their kids and not ship all their jobs to China.
Maybe, like the frog in slow simmering water, the GOP base did not realize that for all these decades their incomes had stagnated or shrunk and there was no trickle down benefit. In the meantime, they were distracted by gays and guns type social wedge issues the GOP threw out there.
But then the economy collapsed under Bush. It collapsed DESPITE low taxes (high taxes for the rich under Clinton did not seem hurt the economy these Republicans must have remembered).
Suddenly, maybe subconsciously, many GOP party members suddenly took stock of their lives. Of how their wages have not seen any increase to keep up with the times. That maybe if they were in a Union then they may have had that health care coverage. That maybe their kids did not have to move back home while the rich got a bailout and the rich were now asking for more deregulation and less taxes on top of all that.
I don’t think a Republican who wakes up from that long sleep suddenly becomes a Democrat. But they realize something is off. They can’t quite place their finger on it. The radio talk show hosts and FOX news casters suddenly don’t make any sense to them. Maybe they realized they have been worshiping at an altar of a false god? They maybe have too much pride or too much invested in being “conservative” to admit they have been wrong for decades and the way they react is just to shut down and drop out and on election night, stay home.