Here’s why we can’t understand Republican voters

[Cyrano]

Many Republican voters just aren’t tuned in. We think that they are imbeciles, bigots, or both, and many are. However, a great many of them are just not paying attention most of the time.

We here at DU tend to follow politics daily and are well aware of what's going on. Most people only follow politics around election time, and even then, only pay attention to the news/cable stations that reinforce their preconceived beliefs/biases.

Republican “packaging,” or “framing of issues,” is so well crafted, that our values and ideas rarely make it through the media filter. (A filter we must find a way to either match, or break.)

We can’t reach those who actually agree with Republican “values.” But we can hold out hope of reaching those that have been duped by GOP lies.

The only products Republicans have to sell is what they’re against – (hatred and fear are great motivators).

We have a superior product – it’s what we’re for. We need to find a way to get heard by those who are voting against their own interests.

[guillaumeb]

1. very well said

I feel that, while we cannot compete with a corporate owned media, the internet is one way to compete, as is organizing people. Organization can be traditional, union based, but it can also be community group based. I belong to a social justice group in the Chicago area, and we have joined with hundreds, occasionally thousands, of fellow citizens for events.

[ananda]

2. I think much of the problem lies in the word "values."

I've heard so many Reeps use that word.

I believe that they honestly think that they have "values"
and liberals don't.

[Cyrano]

4. Perhaps some of their voters buy into

their "values," and maybe even some of those who peddle them believe what they're selling.

But for the most part, the Republican Party survives by playing to bigotry, hatreds and lies. Their "Southern Strategy" consists of "values" based on bigotry. It started with Nixon, has spread beyond the South, and is still working.

Those are not "values" that truly moral, conscientious people believe in.

[procon]

10. You're right.

They love to say the words, but have no concept of what they are actually advocating. My Fox News addicted brother dutifully repeats the propaganda phrases he hears on TV, but if pressed, the word salad quickly falls apart.

He's all all for going to war with Iran, but then he gets flustered when I've pointed out that the only likely benefactor in a US led war against Iran, would be the Big Oil corporations outside of the ME theater of war, and those who are codependent on Big Oil's profits, like the GOP. It's like he views war as a board game, and can't see that someone will still have to pay for yet another ME conflict, or the resulting backlash that would drive up prices across the board and affect global markets, costing us even more at the store, and alienating our international allies, while Republicans and their Big Oil donors get obscenely rich(er).

[Cyrano]

11. Much of it is just hate of Muslims which

Fox and the GOP peddle 24/7.

Hatred of "THE OTHER" keeps many GOP pundits employed full time and many of their listeners living in "full time hatred."

Sadly, it doesn't help make the world a better place in which to live.

[Warpy]

12. Ask them what those values are

It's fun to watch smoke pour out of their ears as they realize they don't know, either.

[SomethingFishy]

19. They have values...

They value money, Christianity, and the ability to discriminate against anyone their little mythology tells them to.

[Savannahmann]

3. We don't know what we're for.

Democrats judging from the last election, are in favor of winning, and opposed to losing. Otherwise we're sure the Republicans are involved on a War on Women, despite the fact that we were laughed at when we put it out after a very short while. For some reason, despite being supposedly smarter, we were too stupid to realize we needed an issue, or two, besides that to run on.

The audience laughed at her. THEY LAUGHED AT HER. If that doesn't show you the stupidity of making that our campaign centerpiece, then perhaps this will. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/10/13/mark-udall-has-been-dubbed-mark-uterus-on-the-campaign-trail-thats-a-problem/

So what is our superior product, and why don't we run on it. You blame Republican packaging, but they read the polls, and craft their arguments to fit in with the public opinion out there.

The Republicans campaigned against the Job Killing Obamacare. The Job Killing Deficit, the Job Killing tax increases and let's not forget Job Killing Minimum Wage. The only thing they didn't claim would kill jobs was Daylight Savings Time. Our answer?

We claimed it wouldn't cost any jobs. The CBO came out and said yes it would. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/02/18/cbo-minimum-wage-jobs/5582779/

So what happened? We folded, the CBO gave the Republican argument legs, and we didn't have anything left. They looked intelligent and most importantly right on the issues, and we looked stupid and out of touch. We didn't have any studies to counter the CBO. No economists were going to come out and dispute the report. We went from saying no we wouldn't lose jobs, to saying those jobs would come back, eventually. We were caught flat footed and looking stupid.

Pick an issue, and we take the lazy way out with no preparations, no study, and no effort to present our view. Just a handful of stupid bullet points that everyone mouths like some sort of mantra. War on women. Idiots.

[Baitball Blogger]

5. Fear and Greed.

The party that motivates through fear and greed.

[n2doc]

6. They may not be paying attention, but the propaganda is constant

sometimes subtle, like on mainstream news or sports shows, sometimes blatant like on Fox, but always there. The bias against Democratic principles is always there. And rarely countered.

[Cyrano]

8. Yep. That comes from 30 - 40 years of

Dems not paying attention to the lessons taught by 20th Century dictatorships.

GOP strategists such as Karl Rove, Frank Luntz, and many before them, are/were well schooled in the dark art of selling diseased ideas to the masses.

Unless and until we Dems find a way to expose their deceptions, we are doomed to continue to lose out to their propaganda.

[Enthusiast]

16. Your post gets to the central issue.

We are being bombarded by constant propaganda. It permeates nearly every single source of print, TV and radio.

The RIGHT is trying constantly to inject the lies into popular culture with a less than stellar track record. But they keep trying because they know it is the last peak unclimbed. Fortunately their message doesn't pass the smell test with young people.

It is a massive propaganda effort designed to mislead the entire world but especially the American people. This is the largest propaganda effort in all of history.

[Avalux]

7. There's an underlying pathology, what you describe is a symptom of it.

Republican voters WANT to be told what to do, they want a Daddy (or Mommy) to protect them; they have authoritarian personalities. Because of this, they are unable to think and see more than one side of an issue, they are unable to determine if whether what they're being told is good for them or not.

They fall in lockstep, swallowing the party line without question. They are lazy.

[Cyrano]

9. That is true for far too many of them,

but far too many of are politically clueless. They hear the propaganda, yet don't pay enough attention to hear opposing views. Those opposing views just happen to be ours and the MSM edits them out most of the time.

[Matrosov]

13. You're giving them too much credit

As someone who lives mostly around the kind of conservatives that are the reason sane people view Republicans as hateful knuckle draggers, I'd say you're giving them too much credit.

Many of them are extremely aware of what is going on around the country and around the world, and they keep themselves informed using a variety of news sources. For example, people are announcing their candidacy just now, but these conservatives have been following and comparing Bush, Christie, Cruz, and Paul, as well as Clinton and Warren, for months and months now.

That is the very frightening thing. They access and process a great deal of information, yet the conclusion they draw from this is that the United States was once a Christian, conservative Utopia that's been under attack since the 1960s (or 1930s, depending on whom you ask) by atheists, communists, foreigners, gays, minorities, and socialists.

On the bright side, there's a huge division within the GOP, as all the potential and confirmed candidates are being dismissed as RINOs or unelectable by one group or another. The expectation is that the GOP will also focus too much on Clinton, and then Warren will jump in late and take the presidency.

[Cyrano]

15. Much of what I've said is based on

what I see here in Palm Beach County, FL.

Many of the people I hear blurting out hate for Dems and Obama, are those who don't seem to be too well informed about current events -- not to mention history. They spew out GOP talking points (i.e. Obama = Chamberlain = Hitler appeaser), but they are really clueless. Most of them don't know who Chamberlain was.

Most of all, I see people who have accumulated some degree of wealth and think the Republicans are better for them personally -- "No new taxes." They can't seem to see beyond that one issue, nor do they seem to be aware of the GOP's position on many issues. They are people who notice what affects them personally, and screw "all the rest of that political crap."

[Matrosov]

25. I live in the Deep South

in an area where we progressive almost have to keep "underground," there are so many hardcore conservatives around.

So perhaps my perception of conservatives is such because with so many more conservatives, naturally there'll be more politically active ones who pay much closer attention than just the average bubba regurgitating Faux News and Limbaugh.

At least it makes for a unique, though rather scary, observation of what some of the far-right is like.

[world wide wally]

14. The Democratic Party leaders need to FLOOD the tv talk shows with hundreds, if not thousands, of

talking heads on all these tv talk shows from now till forever to get any semblance of fairness in this country.
And just when I think there is some semblance of an answer, douchebags like Charles Schumer pop up and throw it right back to the Republicans.
This asshole can't possibly be the Senate Minority Leader and still expect me to identify with Democrats as I have done my entire life… till I heard this.

[Enthusiast]

17. Schumer is dead to me. DWS also.

[hifiguy]

22. The institutional Democratic Party is now wholly captive

to the banksters, the MIC and Wall Street. Not the base, but the party leadership. Why do you think Elizabeth Warren scares them sixteen kinds of shitless?

[JI7]

20. people on here are not well aware of the issues

The ones not paying attention vote either party. They go with what seems popular.

[lame54]

21. they can see weather conditions can't they?...

the weather is screwy everywhere and they still want to deny climate change

[hifiguy]

23. Well, because Jebus and everything.

[tabasco]

26. Plain and simple: propaganda works

The right wing owns the media and we now live in the era of Citizens United, when money is more important than people.

I don't see the situation getting any better and I will be surprised if the corrupt republican bootlickers don't get the presidency.

Republican voters are weak-minded people who lap up propaganda because it molds and supports their world view. The human race seems to be primarily people like this. That's why history is nothing but a neverending series of disasters, war and revolution.