After the GOP's third drubbing in the past four national elections, right-wingers are still clueless about why they keep losing. One of the most common theories -- offered by the likes of El Rushbo and Bill O'Reilly -- is that the majority of the country are freeloaders who want "stuff."
“It’s a changing country, the demographics are changing,” O’Reilly said. “It’s not a traditional America anymore, and there are 50 percent of the voting public who want stuff. They want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama.”
And El Rusbho:
Romney's recipe was the old standby: American route to success, hard work. That gets sneered at. I'm sorry. In a country of children where the option is Santa Claus or work, what wins?
This is basically Mitt Romney "47%" argument -- and Paul Ryan's "makers vs. takers" theory.
But there's a logic problem here, because right-wingers are also convinced that one of the main reasons George W. Bush and the GOP lost so badly in ''06 and '08 was "spending":
And by "spending" -- let's be clear. She's not talking about defense or homeland security -- she means welfare, or as O'Reilly put it, "stuff" for non-white people. And this "spending" explanation is was constantly cited by Teabaggers back in '09 and '10.
But both can't be true.
If George W. Bush and the GOP were rejected by the American people for giving out too much "stuff" -- then Obama shouldn't be winning elections by doing the same.
The fact is, it's just laughable to assert that George W. Bush was hugely unpopular when he left office -- and still is -- because he was too generous to working people. I have yet to see an exit poll from 2006 or 2008 that supported the claim that people were voting Democratic because of Republican "spending."
The real problem for the GOP is that George W. Bush's economic policies were indistinguishable from Mitt Romney's and Paul Ryan's -- tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and deregulation for businesses -- and he had the worst economic record of any post-WWII president. Most people's lives got worse, not better.
And when Republicans told them it got worse because the government was handing out too many free goodies -- they didn't believe them. Nor did they believe that all we had to do was shovel more free money at the "makers" in the form of lower taxes -- and all our problems would be solved.
As long as Republicans keep deluding themselves about why they keep losing elections, they will keep right on losing.
