General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: What is "woke," and why do Republicans hate it so much? [View all]JHB
(37,160 posts)That includes earned benefits like Social Security and safety net programs like the assorted programs that get lumped together as "welfare".
As for "how," it was the usual trick of misdirection followed by playing on prejudices.
In the late 70s and the 80s, conservative organizations would send speakers on tours to address various local groups: Service club (Rotary, Shriners, Masons, Odd Fellows, etc.) lunches, church groups (not from the pulpit, but at social lunches), College Republicans events, veterans groups, etc. Name any potentially conservative-leaning group that gathered people and hosted speakers, and they got someone in there to speak.
They'd start off speaking about entitlements, throwing out big scary numbers about how huge a portion of the federal budget went to entitlements. Then they'd talk about welfare, without ever mentioning that the lion's share, by far, of those big scary numbers was Social Security and Medicare. But if they'd shown only the welfare portion, they wouldn't have gotten the audience alarmed like they wanted to.
The goal was to leave in the audience's minds the impression that their taxes were high because of a vast army of layabouts living on the dole. With enough dog whistles thrown in to point the audience toward who their prejudices would assume are the main groups "living off of MY tax dollars."
The ultimate goal of the conservatives is to do away with all entitlements, including Social Security and Medicare. They used welfare (and race) as a wedge issue to demonize the term "entitlements."