Why Do So Many Seniors Vote GOP When GOP Tells Them They Will Send Them To Glue Factory?

[TheMastersNemesis]

The GOP keeps saying it wants to cut Social Security and Medicare and suggests they should be abolished. Cuts or abolishment would condemn large numbers of seniors to poverty, sickness and early death. These programs are the only programs keeping seniors from the street. So I am really puzzled. I know many seniors who hate Dems. And the Dems have been forced to the right by big money threatening them if they resist cuts.

[Turbineguy]

1. Because the GOP also tells them

that the glue factory is not run by the gubmint and this is a way of getting the gubmint out of their SS and medicare.

[TheMastersNemesis]

4. I Know A Former Colorado State Senator Living In An Assisted Care Facility

She tells me a large number of the seniors there hate Democrats and are RW GOP. Yet they are on Medicare and Social Security. some of them are even teabaggers. If anything they are intransigent and just hate Obama with a passion.

[Buddha_of_Wisdom]

10. I am friends with a former Colorado state senator (as well)..

She is doing very well, except when I have to fix her Internet service.....

She was the first Hispanic woman to be elected to the State Senate.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. Because the president is black and he hates Jesus,

and gay people will make their grandchildren get gay married and convert to Islam, and all their tax money goes to pay for welfare mothers' fifteen kids and their Cadillacs.

Why do you hate America?

[Warpy]

3. There is a cohort before the boomers

that were born during the Depression but don't remember it, vaguely remember the fevered patriotism during WWII, came of age during the prosperity of the New Deal, served in a peacetime military and had no reason to doubt any of the propaganda, and became Nixon's and Reagan's bedrock supporters.

Boomers scared them to death, they thought surely we'd turn the country communist if we ever got any power.

Those are the supporters of the far right crazies now. They know they're looking at the Grim Reaper, they just want to make sure Boomers face him before they do.

[TheMastersNemesis]

7. It Is True That In 2010 A Lot Of Voters Stayed Home. But A Lot Of Seniors Voted GOP And They

helped the GOP take control. And a lot of those seniors were in the southern states. And many of those same seniors were young during the civil rights fights. They supported segregation.

[Bluenorthwest]

22. State of Oregon had record breaking midterm turnout in 2010.

Oddly we also stayed home because we vote by mail, but we sure as hell voted. I tire of being lumped with the rest of the country.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

5. probably because the GOP doesn't tell them they are headed to the glue factory

[RKP5637]

6. Excellent question, I often wonder the same, it's quite bizarre to me. Also, I think

similar of young people thinking they will never grow old.

[Kelvin Mace]

8. Because they assure them

that only the brown seniors will go. By the time they figure out the truth someone is using them hold the vinyl flooring down.

[displacedtexan]

9. They're the darkside of the so-called greatest generation.

They're still fighting WWII and the Cold War at the same time, while pretending that no one they've ever known is/was gay, but they did have a bachelor uncle, who was extremely dapper.

They have no idea that Ronald Reagan was the first G.E. President, or that he was the first witness in the House Unamerican Activities hearings... And the first to name names. Hell, what am I saying? They'd probably cheer to learn that.

And they're not sure why they hate Hillary Clinton, but if you told them that she had a seat at the Watergate Hearings legal table, they'd really hater her even more!

[duffyduff]

28. The vast majority of those people are dead.

A huge chunk of the "elderly" today are baby boomers.

I know it's hard to face that because time has passed so quickly.

[daa]

11. It seems to me their biggest concern is

National security. We democrats don't like war so they think China will over run us. They also refuse to believe Ryan and his buddies will " really" cut social security and Medicare. I have never seen a group vote against their self interest like seniors.

[C_U_L8R]

12. Have you seen the mail seniors get?

They're all on the right wingers direct mail lists
And the the message they get is FEAR.
Again and again in massive quantities.
It's really disgusting how the GOP tries to
manipulate our seniors... And for the most
part they are successful.

Republicans are truly bad people.

[Lancero]

13. Same as Religion.

Indoctrination, pure and simple.

They have been fed many lies. So many that they can no longer see the truth.

[coldmountain]

14. Folk Darwinism, they think it will be even worse for black people, that's all they care about

Belief in a Dangerous World

If, as conservatives tend to believe, human nature is fundamentally competitive and self-interest prevails, then people live in a dangerous world. The “dangerous world” metaphor has long been associated with right-wing ideological views. In the last couple of centuries, though, this metaphor has taken the form of folk-Darwinism. University of Michigan philosopher Peter Railton has dubbed this worldview “your great-grandfather’s Social Darwinism,” in which “all creatures great and small [are] pitted against one another in a life-or-death struggle to survive and reproduce.”

In fact, folk-Darwinism’s ruthless “survival of the fittest” concept is a one-sided (and frequently distorted) view of the fuller scientific picture of evolution that has developed over the second half of the twentieth century. Since the 1960s, biologists have made major advances in understanding how evolution motivates various kinds of altruistic cooperation in nature—in addition to self-interest (which we’ll learn about in part VI). Nonetheless, public opinion’s idea of folk-Darwinism, which situates people in a dangerous jungle world, has generally been evoked to support a right-wing moral philosophy.

Numerous political psychologists have commented on the right’s “Darwinian” dangerous-world metaphor. The Authoritarian Personality group at UC Berkeley remarked how highly ethnocentric subjects had “a conception of a dangerous and hostile world” that resembled an “oversimplified survival-of-the-fittest idea.” One conservative subject recalled the discipline that he used to receive from his father: “I always accused him of being harsh. . . . And apparently this all falls in with Darwin’s theory too.” Others who have linked folk-Darwinism’s dangerous-world motif to conservatism include the British psychiatrist Roger Money-Kyrle (1951), Princeton political psychologist Fred Greenstein (1975), and Berkeley metaphor theorist George Lakoff (2002).

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/15/inside_the_conservative_brain_what_explains_their_wiring/singleton/

[TheMastersNemesis]

15. If Seniors Voted For Progressive & Dems In Same Proportion Minorities Do/GOP Toast

The GOP would not be able to dominate any state either locally or nationally if seniors were more progressive in their voting patterns. That group has been the key in so many elections since Reagan. And if you carefully analyze the landscape of this country the GOP has already destroyed so much.

The loss of job security and wage stagnation has done two things the GOP intended. Loss of job security has allowed them to sow fear and angst and exploit it. Wage stagnation has been a backward door to cutting revenue to the government which leads to cuts in services and rising debt. Lower wages means lower revenues and more dislike of taxes taking more limited income.

This strategy has been going on since Reagan and seniors have been the main focus of that attack. What should be so obvious is masked by the "blind racism" being sown by the GOP and its minions. The civil rights fights were at there height when I was in college in 1965. And blacks were portrayed as the boogey man who would take over the country. Sadly the meme has stuck over time. Now I am a senior and many of my peers are still afraid.

[jwirr]

16. I am a senior who has never voted rethug. But I think I know why they do. Fear is a big factor in

their actions. And they do not understand this new world where Walter Cronkite is gone. They could and did trust him so they still think that the "nice guy" over on faux news can be trusted. And I hate to admit it but many a elderly women is afraid of minority persons. That makes it that much easier for the fear factor to take hold when we have a black president. I am not defending them - just saying.

[TheMastersNemesis]

19. There May Be Good Reason For Such Fear.

The GOP has done all it can to marginalize and create more intense poverty among minorities. If you look at Chicago for example the deep poverty helps the growth of gangs selling drugs. The economic waste land the GOP has intentionally created in Chicago and even Detroit causes people to act in desperation. That creates notable violence that the corrupt media can exploit and help spread fear.

The savage attacks on the poor and vulnerable lends credence to the GOP meme that Obama is giving what little you have to minorities and the lazy poor. It is like rats fighting among themselves.

Look at the movie "Gangs Of New York". When the nativist gangs and the Irish gangs figured out the rich were the instigators and turned on the rich the government shelled the areas where the nativists and Irish lived during a demonstration. Were that to happen to day, the rich would have the militarized police attack the protesters.

These events all fit together.

[jwirr]

20. Yes, but what those who are afraid do not understand is that the rethugs talk a good game but have

done nothing to make us any safer. In fact I think their actions that increase poverty make us all less safe.

[TheMastersNemesis]

21. What Amazed Me Is How The GOP Has Been Able To Exploit Racism And Class Hatred.

Over the years the GOP has been able to marginalize and undercut individuals who were civil rights leaders. Many grew old and no longer able to carry the fight. Younger blacks and hispanic have been hunted down and jailed or even killed for various reasons by a growing police state that bows to the rich. As a result there are no new national civil rights leaders. Also the media has done its job in ignoring any new leaders who might appear. Just the false story that the Black Panthers might be reborn sent the RW into an open rage. Yet that is what blacks need a new Black Panther party and the hispanics need a renewed La Raza to go after the GOP.

And that is what is surprising is that the minorities are not kicking sand into the face of the GOP. The media needs to be challenged openly as well. And it is the minorities that need to openly challenge the GOP leadership on its racism. The GOP can be smashed if the fight is taken bluntly and directly to them.

[ScreamingMeemie]

17. Because...God. And Babies. And the military to some extent.

[bluestate10]

18. Most vote their phobias and hatreds. Logic isn't involved in their thinking. nt

[scheming daemons]

23. because a greater percentage of seniors are racists than younger voters

[0rganism]

24. betting on racism and social conservatism

That's the right wing's crowbar to open them up enough to slip the rest of the agenda into the mix.

[locks]

25. Not all seniors

vote for the GOP crazies, though far too many do. Many of us grew up in a time when our families believed they "made it on their own" even during the depression and looked down on anyone who got any help from the government. Their jobs (before unions) were low pay and few benefits. I was born at home and we only went to the doctor in an emergency. We seldom traveled and information about other people around the world was limited. What we learned about WWII came from the movie news and the radio. We owe a huge debt to the people who fought so hard to unionize and our grandmothers who finally brought the vote to women after years of strife. And to the Democrats who changed the world with government programs that gave us a chance to succeed.
It's true that many of us grew up to become Reaganites and believe that we don't need the government in our lives, that we made it all on our own. But there are so many liberal seniors in our country and where I live in Colorado they work harder than any other age group for the great principles of the Democratic party and realize we would have nothing in our old age if we didn't get such help as Social Security and Medicare.

[dembotoz]

26. the world is changing, it is leaving them behind, they are afraid and they don't like it

and the thugs appeal to that

[UTUSN]

27. K#5 & K n/t

[Plays In Traffic]

29. A few theories I have are...

1. They are symbolically conservative, but actually support liberal programs once you break it down to them. There is a phenomena, particularly among the right of being symbolically conservative, but actually support liberal policies. (The same is true among some people who call themselves, liberals, but not as much).

Many people symbolically associate conservatism with "keeping America, America" - a great country of the land of the free, home of the brave, and Horatio Alger's stories. However, when you question them on policies such as SS, Medicare, middle class, education, the environment, etc., they become much more liberal.

2. The older crowd tends to be more white, bigoted, and inclusive. It is to the point where some will make a racist comment without realizing it is racist.

3. Ignorance. Many hate the idea of a liberal "welfare state that turns people into sloths", but don't realize the help that they have received on the way and the welfare that supports them. To epitomize this, Craig T Nelson once said, "I've been on foodstamps and welfare, did anyone help me out? No." There is a certain schism among the right who receive welfare while denouncing welfare for everyone else.

I literally know this conservative who bought a house with his disability payments and attacks "liberal welfare recipients" with a passion.

Take the 2010 Midterm elections where the elderly showed up in groves and swung hard to the right. Why? It was NOT a Tea Bagging revolution, but they were being driven by fear, lies, and misinformation. They thought that the ACA had death panels and Obama was going to cut their Medicare benefits.

[Hotler]

30. Selfishness.

Selfishness is the cornerstone of the repugs.

[doc03]

31. Why do so many seniors that worked good paying Union jobs and have great

union negotiated pensions and health insurance vote Republican. I am 65 and don't understand it. So many seniors just have a hateful attitude about everybody and everything, I don't understand why they are so miserable. I was sitting next to one at the mall the other day and he sees a black guy with a white women walk by and he says those damn blacks are taking over this country. I think it is maybe because they don't work anymore and feel unless. Myself I always thought work was overrated.

[AnnieBW]

32. Lack of higher-order thinking

As the brain ages, people start to lose the ability to reason clearly. Even if one doesn't have Alzheimers or other dementia issues, you lose short-term memory and higher brain functions. It's why the elderly get scammed easily, or do things that they would not do when they were younger. I've been watching my mother go through dementia and short-term memory loss due to lower oxygen levels in her blood. Fortunately, she's still enough on the ball to be a committed Democrat. I'll KNOW she's gone around the bend if she starts voting Republican.

Seriously, as the brain ages, the "lizard brain" starts to take over. FOX News knows this, and preys on people like this. Plus, a lot of the ones who are pretty well off figure that they've got theirs, and screw everybody else. They should have saved and invested wisely, or they'd be rich, too. My MIL's husband is like that. Rich, Republican, 93 years old, and an asshole. He's an all-right guy, and he's been good to my MIL, but when it comes to politics, he's a total asshole.