Economic Hardship; the Other Demographic Shift that Dooms the GOP

It would be hard to think of a more poorly placed set of priorities. While Americans struggle to get by in an economy that seems to be recovering only for a few, Republicans wage ideological warfare. When employment and the economy should be job one, the GOP has wasted time with nearly forty votes to repeal Obamacare, chased around phantom "scandals," and worked on measures to restrict abortion that have zero chance of ever becoming law. It's bad out there, but the party is acting as if all other problems have been solved, freeing them up to dick around with trivial pet projects.

How bad is it? This bad:

Associated Press: Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.

Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor and loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.

The findings come as President Barack Obama tries to renew his administration’s emphasis on the economy, saying in recent speeches that his highest priority is to “rebuild ladders of opportunity” and reverse income inequality.

Add this to the slow-motion suicide the Republican Party has been committing by trying to alienate everyone. Other than the trickle-down BS that has been disproved by practice so many times,  a hallmark of conservative economic mumbo-jumbo is the belief that people in poor economic situations are there by their own choice -- and if you punish the poor for being poor, the unemployed for being unemployed, their situation will improve. You slash spending on food stamps, cut off people from unemployment benefits, and they'll soon discover that it's too difficult to be poor or unemployed, "pull themselves up by their bootstraps," and just stop be poor. The conservative conception of economic hardship seems to be informed entirely by Ronald Reagan's "welfare queen" myth, not by anything resembling the real world...[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]