Obama's Plot to Seduce the Voting Poor

By claiming that Obama is plotting to commandeer the lifelong loyalty of the poor by giving them a tax break, Rush Limbaugh makes one wonder: Is he high on OxyContin again? This is not a rhetorical question. Limbaugh’s paranoid commentary on the subject has been so inflated, even for a gasbag like him, that he might have sucked it from a helium balloon.

What makes Rush think that Obama would use the Bush/Rove strategy of buying votes with tax breaks? The poor are not as easily bought as the rich. The poor have scruples.

Rush has forgotten that the poor, especially those with religious convictions, have helped elect Republican candidates against all logic, since Republican agendas seldom benefit them. Using racist scare tactics masquerading as morals, GOP strategists have manipulated the poor into voting Republican for 20 years or more. But the poor, without the benefit of Ivy League educations or undeserved tax breaks, managed to wise up to this tactic during the last election cycle. They rejected the Obama-as-Muslim-Bogeyman inferences and helped elect him. Even the religious right lent its partial support to Obama.

The lesson to be learned from this is that the poor will not snuggle up in the pocket of any political party unless they trust its ethics. If Rush and the Republican leaders he caricaturizes don’t understand this, they have no one but themselves to blame when the poor redirect their political allegiance.

But perhaps they do understand it… and that is why they are so nervous. The Bush Administration arguably has been the most immoral in American history. It lied about the reasons for invading Iraq… and the sons and daughters of the poor died in disproportionate numbers fighting on Iraqi soil, defending an agenda that to this day remains unclear. Like everyone else, the poor watched as the Republican Administration approved torture, spied on its own citizens, politicized the justice system, looked the other way while bloated bodies floated over rooftops in New Orleans, and… gave undeserved tax breaks to the richest of the rich.

Now Republicans face a paradox: the poor class in America, whose shifting allegiance they so fear, has doubled or even tripled in size as a direct result of the GOP’s own unfair policies. The poor represent a formidable voting block, now that there are so many of us.

Maybe, as Obama repeatedly stated during his election campaign, he wants to give tax breaks to the poor because they… we… deserve them. Maybe tax breaks for the poor are fair and honorable.

Yeah, that’s it… Obama is plotting to seduce the poor with fair and honorable tax policies.