Republicans love poor people now

[DonViejo]

The party that forever demonized struggling Americans now realizes it needs them, in order to survive. Oops

BY BLAKE ZEFF

It’s safe to say that the Republican Party’s recent decision to “relaunch” itself and suddenly reach out to poor people is motivated more by a naked desire to win votes, than by some Gandhi-like benevolence. If the party’s policy platforms — highlighted by an Edward Scissorhands-like budget that slices programs for the indigent — weren’t a dead giveaway, the RNC’s new ballyhooed strategy plan comes right out and says it.

And yet, despite its dubious origins, the party’s new approach is a striking statement regarding the political power — and numbers — of lower-income people in this country: Rather than dismiss, slur or divide poorer Americans (as in prior elections), Republicans have now made the political calculation that they’ve no choice but to talk directly to them and win their votes.

It bears reminding, this is the Republican Party whose iconic political heartthrob famously demonized “welfare queens,” and whose current “leaders” recently referred to Barack Obama as the “food stamp president.” It’s the party that has almost exclusively talked about poor people, not to them – and when it did mention them, it often was to attack and engender resentment from others (or to express their lack of concern for them).

“The notion that Republicans now say they have to talk to everyday poor people, that they have to present their ideas in a way that struggling Americans see as valuable, is a real shift,” the Rev. David Beckmann, president of the influential anti-hunger organization Bread for the World, tells Salon. “The ideas have to be, in fact valuable, too. And they haven’t yet come up with a real agenda. But just making the shift to say that it’s in our self-interest to pay attention to what Latinos and African-Americans and low-income whites think is a big change.”

-snip-

more:
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/23/republicans_%E2%9D%A4_welfare_queens/

[YoungDemCA]

1. Poor people don't vote nearly as much as middle-income and rich people do...

And poor people are disproportionately non-white.

Good luck with that, Republicans.

[Brigid]

2. No they don't love poor people.

This is laughably transparent.

[Jamaal510]

3. If Republicans DID truly love us,

then this country would be in much better shape, as they wouldn't have been so block-happy with the legislation the president wanted to pass.

[MurrayDelph]

4. They must live poor people

they work so hard to make mire of them.

[Lucky Luciano]

6. Fortunately, I speak iPhone autocorrect!

I can't tell you how many times I texted my wife to tell her "I live you!"

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. The poor will be waiting for them with pitchforks