The trouble for the Republicans is that they've been wrong for a long time. The longer they act out the worse it gets. Resentment has been driving many Republicans since Nixon. Resentment is not a good driving force in a governing party. Paul Krugman takes a look at what Republicans have been doing to themselves and to their country.
"What’s the source of all that anger?
"Some of it, of course, is driven by cultural and religious conflict: fundamentalist Christians are sincerely dismayed by Roe v. Wade and evolution in the curriculum. What struck me as I watched the convention speeches, however, is how much of the anger on the right is based not on the claim that Democrats have done bad things, but on the perception — generally based on no evidence whatsoever — that Democrats look down their noses at regular people.
"Thus Mr. Giuliani asserted that Wasilla, Alaska, isn’t 'flashy enough' for Mr. Obama, who never said any such thing. And Ms. Palin asserted that Democrats 'look down' on small-town mayors — again, without any evidence.
"What the G.O.P. is selling, in other words, is the pure politics of resentment; you’re supposed to vote Republican to stick it to an elite that thinks it’s better than you. ..."
Of course the dismissiveness of people that the Republicans are so upset about and that they call "elitism" is endemic in the Republican party. They're the snobs who find Wasilla, Alaska, mooseburgers, and "country first" exotic and titillating! The rest of us who live in Wasilla, Oregon, or Wasilla, Michigan, or Wasilla, Texas stare at them the way we stared at George H. W. Bush when he discovered supermarket scanners!
Republican resentment is powerful and destructive. And it hasn't gone unnoticed by most voters.
"... The experience of the years since 2000 — the memory of what happened to working Americans when faux-populist Republicans controlled the government — is still fairly fresh in voters’ minds. Furthermore, while Democrats’ supposed contempt for ordinary people is mainly a figment of Republican imagination, the G.O.P. really is the Gramm Old Party — it really does believe that the economy is just fine, and the fact that most Americans disagree just shows that we’re a nation of whiners.
"But the Democrats can’t afford to be complacent. Resentment, no matter how contrived, is a powerful force, and it’s one that Republicans are very, very good at exploiting."
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