What Makes People Vote Republican?

[MrScorpio]

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html

WHAT MAKES PEOPLE VOTE REPUBLICAN?

What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.

Diagnosis is a pleasure. It is a thrill to solve a mystery from scattered clues, and it is empowering to know what makes others tick. In the psychological community, where almost all of us are politically liberal, our diagnosis of conservatism gives us the additional pleasure of shared righteous anger. We can explain how Republicans exploit frames, phrases, and fears to trick Americans into supporting policies (such as the "war on terror" and repeal of the "death tax" ) that damage the national interest for partisan advantage.

But with pleasure comes seduction, and with righteous pleasure comes seduction wearing a halo. Our diagnosis explains away Republican successes while convincing us and our fellow liberals that we hold the moral high ground. Our diagnosis tells us that we have nothing to learn from other ideologies, and it blinds us to what I think is one of the main reasons that so many Americans voted Republican over the last 30 years: they honestly prefer the Republican vision of a moral order to the one offered by Democrats. To see what Democrats have been missing, it helps to take off the halo, step back for a moment, and think about what morality really is.

I began to study morality and culture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1987. A then-prevalent definition of the moral domain, from the Berkeley psychologist Elliot Turiel, said that morality refers to "prescriptive judgments of justice, rights, and welfare pertaining to how people ought to relate to each other." But if morality is about how we treat each other, then why did so many ancient texts devote so much space to rules about menstruation, who can eat what, and who can have sex with whom? There is no rational or health-related way to explain these laws. (Why are grasshoppers kosher but most locusts are not?) The emotion of disgust seemed to me like a more promising explanatory principle. The book of Leviticus makes a lot more sense when you think of ancient lawgivers first sorting everything into two categories: "disgusts me" (gay male sex, menstruation, pigs, swarming insects) and "disgusts me less" (gay female sex, urination, cows, grasshoppers ).

[Pisces]

1. Religion, tradition, upbringing, racism, greed

[getdown]

12. hierarchy

[freshwest]

2. Sounds reasonable. But religion plays the biggest part, media, etc.

[baldguy]

3. Fear, hatred & stupidity.

[Politicalboi]

9. I think you got it

It fits them to a tee.

[lonestarnot]

4. lack of fucking sense and inculcation.

[NSojac]

5. They are entrenched in their own internally-consistent alternate reality bubble

inflated by corporate media, confirmation bias, and cognitive dissonance.

[Ter]

6. When Democrats ban light bulbs

I'm serious, I know one guy who voted puke for this reason. We hurt ourselves with some of our votes. Banning plastic bags and toys in Happy Meals are other reasons.

[liberal N proud]

7. Lazyness is one reason

The other I see is that Dad was a puke so they have to be.

Bottom line, it is easy to listen to the propaganda and be told what you think rather than investigate for facts and make up your own mind.

[getdown]

8. control

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

10. GOP has FoxNoise to spread its propaganda and hate 24/7

[Ter]

13. Fox News is pretty new

What is it, 1998 or so? Republicans won before then.

[RKP5637]

11. Not everyone read the whole article in depth! LOL

[Jackpine Radical]

16. Right. Google the author. He seems to have a theory that, at base,

claims that liberals are less moral, less generous and less happy than conservatives. He has quite an online presence. Look for yourselves.

[getdown]

21. he seem to be for

preserving the status quo

[MrScorpio]

19. I suggest that everyone should do that...

Because actually the answer, in short, is that people who do vote Republican do so to demonstrate an ideology of being morally superior to liberals.

They hold their own belief system to morally superior and, to them, that superiority trump any idea of fairness applied to society as a whole. Especially, if that fairness is supposed to be applied to other people unlike themselves.

Maintaining such an ideology can cause people like this to engage in gross hypocrisy and cruelty, all in the name of their own moralistic ideals, i.e., abortion is bad for other people, but if my own underaged daughter gets pregnant, she's getting an abortion. Or, someone like Santorum can spout off that he doesn't want to give black people someone else's money for welfare and completely disregard the fact that the vast majority percentage of welfare recipients are actually white.

People vote Republican because the Republicans do such a wonderful job at pandering to the fears and disgusts of people who are predisposed to fears about uncertainty, non-conformity and so-called amoralism.

Basically, these are self-serving, hypocritical assholes with a massive entitlement complex.

[getdown]

22. you nailed it

"Basically, these are self-serving, hypocritical assholes with a massive entitlement complex."

The patriarchal hierarchy in a nutshell

[JoePhilly]

25. I agree with you.

The project moral superiority because it makes them feel better about themselves.

I am better than you. I am entitled to tell you what you can and can not do. You need to obey me.

If I break the rules, it was a mistake, which I can confess to God. If you make a mistake, its a character flaw, and you are morally bankrupt.

[seabeyond]

26. racism is bad, but if i have a chance to stamp a prostitutes arm to use her that is fun....

like that?

[evilkumquat]

14. The Three G's - Gold, Guns and God

Money, the Second Amendment and organized religion is the unholy trinity of Republican politics.

And what amazes me is that on the surface, NO ONE who supports any of these three things should get along with the others.

The rich should be afraid of guns because armed folk can steal their stuff while the religious are telling them to spend their money on charity and for obvious reasons (i.e., guns kill people and churches preach "Thou Shalt Not Kill&quot religion is anathema to gun ownership.

But instead, these three disparate groups have banded together to create a political juggernaut.

[ErikJ]

15. You forgot the fourth G- Gold, Guns, God and Gays.

[MrScorpio]

20. Number five is "Gametes".

The anti-abortionists abound.

[PassingFair]

18. The 4 S's.......

Selfish
Superstitious
Scared
Stupid

..any one characteristic or any combination can
create a vote for a conservative politician.

[deacon]

17. Sniffing too much glue comes to mind. n/t

[opihimoimoi]

23. Fantasy(Religion)....the belief of Self over all others..coupled with Facists...Guns and Nuns

cummulative Fanatical power can bring about great damage to self and others closeby...

History is replete with Fanatics...one of which was W Bush....he lied to us...people died

needlessly on his orders.....

[RKP5637]

24. That does seem to be the foundation/glue that holds them together, "Fantasy(Religion) the

belief of Self over all others" as a basis. These, IMO, are akin to those that have supported horrific dictators over eons.

[opihimoimoi]

30. 2012 is the YEAR OF REASON.... Truth trumps Fantasy

[RKP5637]

32. I hope so, I truly do. The delusions, fantasy and nonsensical talk are ridiculous.

[kemah]

27. Even goes back to the Civil War

The majority of rebel soldiers were poor whites, who also hated slavery. They hated slavery because they had to compete with the plantation owners for jobs which the owners would use slaves to fill those jobs. The poor whites fought, barefooted, ill equipped, no uniforms, starved, and their families also starved. The owners said they would take care of their families but did not.
Plantation owners did not even plant corn to feed their people or army but only planted cotton and tobacco, both cash crops. These crops were then smuggled to Britain where they were bartered for luxury items and food to sell to the plantation owners. They did not smuggle guns because who wants to get paid with confederate dollars?

[MrScorpio]

28. Republicans and the people who vote for them think that they're better people than you

No matter what, DENY them that idea.

If you're an atheist, or a Muslim or even a buddhist, they are no more or less moral than you are.

Aquaint yourself with that name of every Christian terrorist, like Eric Rudolph, whenever they spout off a word like "Islamoterrorist".

Tell them that abortions happen, not as moral failure, but as a medical procedure that can save lives. If they ever invoke "God's will", ask them if they'd rather see their wives, daughters, sisters and mothers DIE instead of having being treated. If they were raped, how can they tell their wives or daughters that they're going have the rapist's baby no matter what?

These people are not better than you are and you have every right to call yourself a patriotic American, because you're a liberal and always vote Democratic.

[MineralMan]

29. They're part of the Moran Majority, I guess...

[BreweryYardRat]

31. Greed, narcissism, negativity, ignorance, stupidity, bigotry, miscellaneous factors.

And by miscellaneous factors, let me cite two examples:

#1: Managed to go from very poor to upper-middle-class (in 30-odd years) and doesn't recognize that in addition to his undeniable hard work, his success also involved social programs and luck.

#2: Raised by a single (initially) mother who recognized that voting Democratic was in her economic best interests. However, she did not adhere to the ethical principles that the Democratic Party promotes. By that, I mean she was psychotic and physically/emotionally/verbally abusive. Furthermore, when she remarried, she married a violent alcoholic who once beat the youth in question brutally enough to cause a personality change.

[fascisthunter]

33. Ignorance, fear, racism, greed and idiocy

[whistler162]

34. Not another idiotic author...

just as idiotic when Anne Coulter blathers the same drivel only against Democrats/Liberals!