Roanoke Tea Party

You know we have a president who has his hand involved in two scandals in which Americans died because of dunder-headed policies (Fast and Furious and Benghazi). The economy has tanked, the debt has risen to $16 trillion and we are headed for a short term and a long term fiscal cliff. Not to mention the repeated and dramatic flaunting of the Constitution.

You would think that this president would have to consider resigning, not running a campaign that has at least 47% or so of the  people in the country supporting him. Many of the people I speak to just can’t understand how anyone can possibly support the President.

I know many Obama supporters. They are generally smart, well adjusted people. It sometimes is hard to fathom how they can vote the way they vote.

So I woke up this morning and asked myself…how do people come to the conclusion that Obama is worthy of support? I don’t think there is one answer to this…so I have taken the time to break down Obama supporters into groups.

I think Obama supporters can be in more than one of these artificial categories. I’ll take a few days to write about these groups. If we are truly going to change this country, we have to find ways to get through to some of these people…and that is going to be no easy task.

Here is Part One:

The Paid Off:

These include a diverse group including

• Corporate Cronies like G.E. that pay little to no tax burden due to tax breaks for “clean energy
• Union bosses and their supporters who get a supportive government to enrich themselves
• The infamous “phone lady” and others on direct government welfare
• Federal employees
• Those on programs like Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid who have paid into a system their entire lives and logically think they should get their money back and believe the President will protect their programs

It is difficult to intellectually persuade someone whose livelihood is directly or indirectly derived from government support. This is a very loyal block of voters and unfortunately they are the easiest to manipulate by evil officials who lie about the solvency of all of these programs.

And unfortunately many of these people will be the ones most hurt when the lies from Washington about the solvency of the U.S government  inevitably unravel. The simplistic lie that rich people can pay “a little more” and everything will be OK likely makes sense to these folks.

Never mind that it is a total falsehood as you can see from this chart below. This chart was derived from data from that crazed right wing think tank; the IRS. Anyone (including a journalist) can find this information. The logic that the problem is that the rich don’t pay enough in taxes is silly. So if the logic of the left is so easy to refute, why can’t anyone break through this lie with these voters?

Well…you have leaders who promulgate the lie of the rich paying more because it gives them a scapegoat and a villain to blame for their policy failures.

You have a media that refuses to report the truth because they support the leaders who are lying

And you have a large group of people who are dependent on the government. These folks are not going to dig deep for an uncomfortable truth that hurts their economic position.

So you need leaders who can speak the truth and a media that will call out those who do not. While many of the paid off will never change their minds, some could be persuaded if an honest case was laid out and the media actually reported on it. I personally know people that fall into this category who don’t support the president. They see the bigger picture.

But the key for turning some members of this group is honest reporting  and political leadership. And those are two things in short supply these days.

Part 2 coming soon….

Chip Tarbutton