Republicans: We Loves Us a Permanent Underclass!

Whaddya mean, help the poor or the working class! Why? They don't vote for us!

Tell me why I'm wrong about this. Explain it. Say, "You're wrong because Republicans clearly want to help the poor, the minorities, those without access to healthcare, those who suffer malnutrition and the physical stress of poverty. We're all in for policies that would help the poor." But, Republicans, you can't say that, and you know it.

Why can't you say it? It would be easy to say it's because you hate the poor. Now, I really believe that, in case you didn't know. What I mean by that can, in fact, be nuanced, in that conservatives' hatred of the poor is not rooted in a "I just fucking hate the poor" kind of certitude. It's rooted instead in an underlying quasi-religious set of values. One, hardcore Christians -- especially those who can trace their values back to the early Puritans of New England -- believe in predestination, the idea that God has already chosen those who are worthy of residing for eternity in Heaven with Him. For there to be a chosen people, there must be the unchosen, and that would be the poor, the permanent losers as dictated by God. Without that clear distinction, with losers one can easily identify, there are no obvious chosen ones. And, two, conservatives believe, or say they believe, in the efficiency of markets, in which the markets pick winners and losers rationally, and, once again, the markets will choose the chosen and unchoose the losers. This is the secular justification for a permanent underclass.

Sorry, libertarians, conservatives, Republicans, but you're busted, and you'll never be able to cobble together an argument that can disprove the consistency of the above statement. Why? Because your every action for the past thirty years has shown that this is, if not the nature of your policies, then the implications of them. You can't be against every effort to maintain or increase the safety net, improve access to healthcare, make education more broadly available or affordable, etc., etc. without it being obvious that anything that helps the poor or minorities will never get your support.

Hell, recently your party has been doing everything it can to limit minority participation in our democratic process, and everybody knows it. You don't like the poor, and the last thing you want is to help them vote, probably because you think the unwashed don't deserve to vote.

What is it that Republicans are actually for, you might ask? Rugged individualism! Efficient markets! Kickass armies! Zero gun control! More and bigger guns! Also, no Medicaid! No unemployment benefits! Privatize Medicare! Lower Social Security benefits! Cut food stamps! Not so many Pell grants! No judges nominated by a Democratic president! No free health services for women, especially contraceptives! No sex education! More abstinence! More teen pregnancies! No unions! Lower wages! No more brown-skinned people in America!

Tell me this isn't what Republicanism stands for these days. You can't because it's reaffirmed everyday by every action on the GOP on both the state and federal level. It's even grosser on the state level. For example, the Wisconsin state GOP is going to vote to affirm the state's right to secede from the Union. Rick Perry of Texas was talking this up a couple of years ago. You love America so much you'd rather destroy it than cede a single inch to the filthy liberals that have bleeding hearts. Wow.

Now Democrats did used to talk like that. Their names were Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, among others. But when it became unfashionable for Democrats to harbor these convictions, what did they do? Why, they became Republicans! It was the natural thing to do. What did the Republicans do? Why, they embraced them with a hearty "Welcome home!"

A word to the Democrats: This is your opposition. Don't pussyfoot around when countering them. Pick your policies, like strengthening Medicare, Social Security, healthcare, education, the safety net, programs for the poor, raising the minimum wage, strengthening unions and workplace rules, as well as laws that bring more equality to women, gays, minorities, and shout out support for these policies until it echoes from the highest rafters. Then gather the men, women, gays, minorities, and such together and march to the polls, drive to the polls, bring portable potties to the polls, lunch wagons to the polls and vote, vote, vote to bring people to power who believe in all the people, not just the chosen few whom God has anointed.

Want some inspiration for this kind of action? Listen to this from FDR:

Same forces aligned against us, no? Do the Republicans still feel the same way?

Yes, he referred to Charles Murray and Bob Putnam, and there's a chance that Ryan was using code words like "inner city" to, I don't know, refer to whom? Anyone got an idea?

Go ahead, Republicans, say you don't hate the poor and the minorities, or, at the very least, prefer to preserve the status quo so that we have a permanent underclass for you to blame for their own shortcomings.

Of course, you can't say that.