Republicans, Race, Gender & Free Stuff
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Much to the dismay of the fine folks at Fox (and to the delight at the marvelous mortals at MSNBC) Obama was re-elected president. In the face of this defeat for the Republican Party, there was a rush to explain Obama’s victory.
Bill O’Reilly, visibly shaken by the results, put forth a three part explanation falling under the general heading of demographic change. The first part is that 50% of the voters want free stuff and they voted for Obama because he would give it to them: “It’s a changing country, the demographics are changing. It’s not a traditional America anymore, and there are fifty percent of the voting public who want stuff. They want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama.”
The second part is that there are more non-white people in America and they voted for Obama, presumably because he is only half-white and Romney was 100% white. The third part is that women (who may simply fall under people who want free stuff) voted for Obama: “The white establishment is now the minority. And the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama’s way. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?”
This explanation, which is a beautiful example of a rhetorical (or persuasive) explanation, certainly matches what could be seen as some of the uglier parts of the Republican narrative regarding people of color, women and the 47%. However, what is most striking about it is that O’Reilly said many true things.
First, he actually underestimated the percentage of voters who like free stuff. I would say that the figure is closer to 100% than 50%, given the extent to which Americans of all classes receive “stuff” from the state and seem to like that “stuff.” I know I liked getting my Pell grant. Now I like driving on public roads, running on public sidewalks, enjoying the protection of the state in the form of police and the military and so on. While I do not receive Social Security yet, I certainly would like to get that when I retire—after all, I have been paying into it for years.
Being somewhat more serious, O’Reilly’s main point seems to be that those who supported Obama did so out of a moral failing—they simply want to get free stuff from the state. However, the evidence that 50% of American voters are morally defective in this manner seems to be assumed by O’Reilly based on the fact that they voted for Obama rather than on the basis of significant and objective evidence. O’Reilly seems to have mainly just bought into Romney’s infamous 47% remark which was not grounded in reality but merely based in stereotypes and prejudices.
Second, he was right that most voters who are not white voted for Obama. Of course, plenty of white voters voted for Obama as well. While O’Reilly and others seem to be casting this as a moral flaw on the part of said voters of insufficient whiteness, he did point to an important reason Obama won: most black and Hispanic voters believed that they would be better off with Obama in office than Romney. While O’Reilly clearly buys into the old racial stereotypes that blacks and Hispanics are lazy spongers and presents this as a reason for Obama’s win, the real reason lies elsewhere. To be specific, the Republican party has made little serious effort to win over black and Hispanic voters at best and at worst some elements of the party seem to embrace views that are at least tinged with racism. This is not just a matter of immigration but of broader issues as well. As such, it is not just that Obama won these voters it is also the case that the Republicans lost them. While it is no doubt emotionally satisfying to put the blame on the black and Hispanic voters, this does them an injustice and also, ironically, serves to make the situation worse for the Republican Party in terms of gaining voters.
Third, he was right that Obama did very well with single women. As with blacks and Hispanics, the explanation seems to be that the women who supported Obama did so from their moral failings—that is, they want free stuff (presumably abortions and birth control). While this might be an emotionally satisfying narrative, it is at odds with reality. While it is true that Obama won over many women voters by doing things that benefit them (such as supporting equal pay for women), this hardly shows that these women merely want free stuff or that they are thus morally defective. If it does, it would seem to show that almost all voters are morally defective—after all, people tend to vote for the person they think will do what is best for them. In this case, women voters would be morally defective, but this would not be a special flaw on their part.
O’Reilly also seems to fail to consider that while Obama did win over many women voters, the Republicans also lost them. Rush Limbaugh denouncing Sandra Fluke as a slut surely did not help the Republicans. It is also likely that the “legitimate rape” and unequal pay episodes of Akin and Mourdock’s idea that being impregnated by rape is a gift from God did not win over women votes. The attempt to impose mandatory transvaginal ultrasoundon women seeking an abortion probably also pushed a few women voters away from the Republican Party. While I could go on providing examples, it should be clear that women had incentives other than getting free stuff to vote for Obama.
A Philosopher's Blog 
Great article
“While I could go on providing examples, it should be clear that women had incentives other than getting free stuff to vote for Obama.”
Agree. I think Aikin’s remark was especially damaging.
TJ,
I’ll wager that the majority of black, single mothers didn’t care or even know what Aiken said.
Aikin*
Not sure about that. It got a lot of air time. Are you claiming that they don’t care or that they do not know?
My hypothesis is that a significant number don’t care and don’t know.
On what do you base that?
On what do you base Rush Limbaugh denouncing Sandra Fluke as a slut surely did not help the Republicans? Rush Limbaugh was not running for president. Nor was this in any way a part of Romney’s campaign. Perhaps the media making an issue of it had more impact? But I doubt even that, given that such statements from someone like Libaugh tend to just reinforce the feelings of both bases.
While anecdotal evidence is entertaining, it has almost no weight as evidence. Do you have objective, significant statistical data to back up your hypotheses?
Agree with this, too.
magus71: Explain your thinking here. Are you hinting that the thinking of black, single mothers who may have been raped is different than that of white single mothers who may have been raped? How about Asians and Hispanics. Do they ever get raped? Are those rapes always “legitimate”?
The party does face a serious challenge in that the very influential social conservatives often include people who have unusual views and express them to the detriment of the party as a whole. The Democrats have somewhat less of a problem in this regard.
“I know I liked getting my Pell grant. Now I like driving on public roads, running on public sidewalks, enjoying the protection of the state in the form of police and the military and so on. While I do not receive Social Security yet, I certainly would like to get that when I retire—after all, I have been paying into it for years.”
And this is why the slippery slope argument holds true. You equate the above items with free contraception.
I don’t equate it, except insofar as they are provided by public money and are beneficial. As I have argued, free contraception saves us money and has is a rational expenditure.
Mike’s arguments about Americas are statdy getting free stuff misses the issue: Americans are getting more free stuff now than ever before, more than they did before Obama was elected. The statistics bear this out. Our generation does expect the government to provide more than did our grandparents’ generation.
Greece, Italy, and Spain wanted the same thing. The biggest difference is that the whole world will suffer when America goes the way of Greece.
What’s Obama’s plan to cut the deficit? Will he do it? Just wondering what people on here think: Will the debt be greater or smaller than it is now, in four more years? If the debt is greater, will America be weaker?
Oh, I agree. Billions are funneled into wealthfare and people are addicted to those subsidies, deductions, and so on.
See how Mike twists this? He “agrees”. Because “Billions are funneled into wealthfare “. “Wealthfare”. From my readings of Mike’s opinions and such, he seems to classify any tax deduction as a the government giving out wealth instead of government taking wealth. Sophistry and flat out intellectual dishonesty.
I was gonna say the same thing, but it’s useless.
More or less useless than the last patrol of a suspect village you took your team through?
I am going to predict that Obama will try to change the constitution in 2015 so that he can remain longer as president. We will be in a worldwide depression by then, and war will be raging in the Middle East. The EU will be crumbling and China will be very aggressive.
You should go back to the Oct. Romney Prediction article to enter this, TJ.
Last month Romney was going to win the popular vote. Instead Obama stole, cheated, or bought a nearly 4 million vote popular vote advantage. I assume your first sentence here is to be taken as seriously as your vote prediction. Your last two sentences carry at least a few grains of possibility . At worst, you should be advocating bunker-building and buying stock in related companies:
http://pecangroup.org/surviving-the-day/how-to-build-a-bunker-on-a-budget
Whatever you have invested in solar and wind, cash it in and go with pecangroup—assuming it’s a public company.
I admit that the voters were farther gone than I had realized. That makes me even more pessimistic.
Do you really believe that? When you walk in public or drive down the street do you really think of most Americans you meet, “why that lass or laddie is probably a welfare cheat!” ?
Do you really believe that Republicans are opposed to public roads, public sidewalks, police and the military and other things that everyone Republicans admire from Adam Smith to Hayek to Friedman believe government should be doing? Or does knocking down such straw men give you warm feeling of self-righteousness?
It’s the voters. The 47% that Romney can’t dig himself out from under (even in his own party!). I’d be pessimistic, too.
It’s a real question , isn’t it, whether even Romney, with his incomparable business sense, could have guided these muddled masses out of the morass that Obama apparently stirred up within a mere two months of taking office. Wasn’t that when the Tea Party miraculously and of a sudden realized that our government was going to hell in a hand basket? They couldn’t have congealed into whatever form they currently are taking while GWB was in office? I wonder what feelings deep down inside turned on the bulb in their little dark rooms?
Gingrich, Jindal, Christie now shaking their heads and wondering what the Republican Party can do as long as the people who work hardest , “voters, likely” are pilloried by its party leader, loser, Romney:
http://themoderatevoice.com/168350/more-romney-gifts-fallout-criticized-by-gingrich-and-christie/
Newtie: “I’m very disappointed with Governor Romney’s analysis, which I believe is insulting and profoundly wrong. First of all, we didn’t lose Asian-Americans because they got any gifts. He did worse with Asian-Americans than he did with Latinos. This is the hardest-working and most successful ethnic group in America. They ain’t into gifts. Second, it’s an insult to all Americans. It reduces us to economic entities. You have no passion, no idealism, no dreams, no philosophy. If it had been that simple, my question would be, why didn’t you outbid him?
“He had enough billionaire supporters, if buying the electorate was the key, he could have got all his Super PAC friends together and said, don’t buy ads, give gifts. Be like the northwest Indians who have gift-giving ceremonies. We could have gone town-by-town and said, ‘Come here, let me give you gifts. Here are Republican gifts.’ An elephant coming in with gifts on it.”
magus71: I’ll reserve any predictions and base later ones on the performance of the House.
First, he actually underestimated the percentage of voters who like free stuff. I would say that the figure is closer to 100% than 50%, given the extent to which Americans of all classes receive “stuff” from the state and seem to like that “stuff.”
Again, Mike demonstrating his ignorance of economics. Or in this case, just common sense. If close to 100% of people are getting “free” stuff, where is it coming from? Someone is paying for it. You need to make Mikey play by his own rules. Simply quoting an anti-Republican article in a MSM paper is lame to begin with, but when you consider that the article actually has the cajones to claim that tax deductions constitute getting “free stuff”, it’s logical fallacy. Unless of course, one is a full blown socialist in the sense that one believes that letting people keep the money that they earned is somehow giving them something for “free”. TANSTAAFL.
You guys let Mke-o-masses off way too easily on this subject.
It can come from others at different times. For example in health insurance, young healthy contributors subsidize the costs of older sick contributors. In education, childless taxpayers subsidize the cost of education for those parents with children. Childless taxpayers also subsidize the cost of children via the child tax credit. Those who obtain income from capital gains and dividends get a lower tax rate that is subsidized by those whose income is earned.
Sometimes it comes from deficit spending.
You really haven’t thought this through. There’s an old saying that a society can’t get rich by doing other people’s laundry. Do you understand why that is? Where is the “free stuff” the childless taxpayers are getting coming from?
Are you familiar with the story of “Stone Soup”? If not, look it up. While often told as a lesson in cooperation, it’s really a lesson in confidence games. The soldiers (or strangers in some tellings) are conning people out of their own food.
“For example in health insurance, young healthy contributors subsidize the costs of older sick contributors.”
More accurately, this should read: “For example in health insurance, poor, young healthy contributors subsidize the costs of older, often very wealthy, sick contributors. Due to demographics, it is highly unlikely that the young people of today will be taken care of similarly when they get old, and because they were taxed so heavily when they were young they will not have any savings to fall back on.”
I spend a fair bit of time in Europe, and while people live pretty well there it always struck me that instead of wanting to accomplish anything great most Europeans just want to live a comfortable life. My guess is that more and more Americans are beginning to feel the same way.
Why bother to start a business when you can just get a cushy government job?
Most people throughout history have just wanted to live comfortably (or just live). Few people try for greatness and far fewer ever succeed. So what is special about this now? The idea that people are in a state of degeneracy and lazy certainly has a long pedigree-but this seems to be more of an ideological position than one that is backed up with adequate evidence.
While anecdotal evidence is entertaining, it has almost no weight as evidence. Do you have objective, significant statistical data to back up your hypotheses regarding Europe and the decay of America?
Here is a start:
http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/are-we-becoming-less-entrepreneurial/
Also, you must have noticed the decline in university standards over the years. Kids work less and learn less at college than they used to. I will dig up the “objective, significant statistical data” if you have any doubt about this.
This does hold true in many cases. One reason is that businesses started increasing their requirements (B.A. rather than high school diploma) and universities had to accept an increased enrollment of people who are in college simply to get that paper to get that job. However, the decay of education is not as bad as is generally though.
“One reason is that businesses started increasing their requirements ”
Where’s your study to support this? One could equally argue that the education systems were doing a poorer and poorer job, thus in order to find qualified candidates they needed people who spent more time in school. Their requirements didn’t change, it was a failure of the credentialling system. Thus the need for basic math classes and such at the junior community college levels. Once upon a time a high school diuploma meant something. Now any doofus can get one simply by showing up. And sometimes even that is marginally required.
“Kids work less and learn less at college than they used to.”
I have asked Mike if he has seen a decline in student’s abilities since he began teaching. He seemed resistant to answer, perhaps because it supports my hypothesis of national decline. When I say “moral” decline, I mean classically American morals, too, not just gay marriage issues. Things like discipline, timeliness, hard work. I consider those moral issues. How can our nation excel without those qualities among its people? And be sure, as TJ says, there are visible differences in how Europeans go about business compared to Americans, We are becoming more like them.
As a reflex against the type of sleepy socialism we see in Europe, I expect to see the significant rise again of fascism. It’s already happening in Greece. Human beings, especially young ones, need something to energize them.
“Human beings, especially young ones, need something to energize them”
Wars do that quite effectively. Bring back the draft. . .
It is commonly believed that students are worse every year. I’ve been a professor for about twenty years and I remember the old profs saying the same thing when I was the new guy.
I used to buy into that, but questioned it on the following grounds:
1. If every generation of students has been noticeably stupider than the previous one and this has been going on for such a long time, the current students should be idiots.
2. Looking back at historical writings, I see the same claim over and over. However, there is little in the way of evidence being given. This suggests this is something older people always say about the young. Much as they deride their fashion and music.
3. Comparing myself and my contemporaries to those older than me does not show that they had better education or are inherently superior.
4. I’ve found that as I get more experienced and better in my field, students seem worse by comparison. After about 20 years of effort I am so much better and know much more. So an 18 year old kid seems worse to the 46 year old me than to the greenhorn I was at 27.
That said, there are legitimate concerns about the quality of education. I would say that the top schools and the well funded schools are at least as good as they ever were. However, educational injustice is a major problem.
In a bombshell finding that’s unnerving the staffs of America’s universities, a new study concludes that 45 percent of college students made “no significant gains in learning” in their first two years on campus. While professors have become more focused on their research than teaching, students have become increasingly fixated on their social lives. In fact, the report (based on the book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses) reveals that students are spending 50 percent less time studying than their 1970s and 1980s counterparts. How can colleges justify rising tuition costs?
http://theweek.com/article/index/211202/are-college-students-learning-anything
Can’t say that every graduation is noticeably dumber. Especially at the college level where you are dealing with a self-selecting population. Of course, work ethic could still change.
Now high school students on the other hand. Are you saying that Americans are doing as well in global comparison to how they were doing say, 30 years ago?
Good question. It is worth considering why our ranking has dropped. Is it that we got worse or is it that the competition has improved? After all, the world has changed a lot in 30 years. However, we should be doing better. And we can-usually we get the best people to move here and that helps us a great deal. We are doing worse at doing this and we are paying for it.
It’s my personal experience that young people coming out of high school do not read and write as well as did the kids of my generation.
I may also add, that this is my, and most conservatives, issue with immigration. We should accept the most qualified people to be citizens, no just the people who can’t find work anywhere else. We need to stop focusing so much on hispanic immigration just because it’s a voting block and look to Asia. Asians are good at math. 🙂
Suggested reading for all:
http://www.amazon.com/Who-Killed-Homer-Classical-Education/dp/1893554260
Homer’s dead? what will Marge and Bart and Lisa do?
I can add one bit of useful info here. Take a kid who’s been at home, being educated in the public school, private school, or home school environment, send him/her away to a school to be among people the likes of whom he’s never seen, to a world where he, more or less, has to self-regulate his life, make major choices that he hasn’t been faced with within a similarly free environment, and something is bound to suffer. Too frequently, it’s academics. Universities, for the most part, don’t mind. They get the parents’ money for two years, the ‘student’ drops out, and there’s space for a new freshman whose odds of success are fifty- fifty or worse.
biomass2, you’re right about academics suffering when they leave home. I must admit, that for all my criticisms about the military, I believe most young people who use the GI Bill are far ahead of their fellow students, because they’ve already been away and learned some sort of discipline. People who don’t take advantage of the military education incentives are selling themselves way short.
magus71:
I wrote in my 11:03 post “. . .and something is bound to suffer. ” That conclusion, I believe, is a result of my just looking for a neat conclusion that sounded nice. Chalk it up to lack of my morning coffee. I do believe,however, that there are real benefits from being out in the world on one’s own for a while before undertaking some form of advanced ed. Broad experience is great for developing coping mechanisms and adjusting to “diferent” people—though, admittedly, different people manage to internalize their varied experiences in many different ways.
But, some/many kids come out of their pre-college schooling and transition into college quite successfully. For them, “something is[n’t] bound to suffer”. Why? Many , I believe, benefit from making a wise college or university choice. A catholic school student goes to Notre Dame, for example. A private religious school student goes to Liberty University. A less than capable public school student ignores the empty promise that he can be anything he wants to be and enters a good technical school. Etc.
What I’m saying, briefly, is that choosing the appropriate school is a very important part of a students’ success and the value of the education he receives. An honest self-analysis, based in part on real world experience, is imperative before heading off to school. Higher education has a lot to offer the person who is prepared to take all there is to get.
Again…here’s an individual with 3 years of college, at taxpayer expense of approx. $70,000. Mike wants you to believe that a man with 3 years of college in the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s could have been this stupid.
Maybe students don’t learn what businesses need them to know because the teachers have other priorities. Which ties into the homefront issue:
The Postman and Weingartner book was intriguing to me because I thought, “Well, what do you mean teaching as a ‘subversive activity’? What are we talking about?” And of course what Postman and Weingartner were trying to point out, not for language teaching in particular but for education in America and the United States in general, to what extent are we shaping the lives of the children in our public schools and the kids in our high schools? To what extent are we perhaps subversively providing messages to them on: What is good? What is bad? What is right? What is wrong?
…
Having said that about the audience’s political leanings — well, it wasn’t unanimous. After the scripted part of the lecture, there was a question-and-answer session (which I mostly didn’t record, unfortunately), and this guy pictured here emerged as the hero of the day. He was the only person to speak his mind and basically call Brown out on the carpet. I don’t have a tape of his exact words, but he basically said, “Are you nuts? My job, like yours, is to teach English to immigrants; and all they want is to learn the language. Period. Politics is completely beside the point, and the reason students get mad at you is not the specifics of your viewpoints, but because you’re wasting their time on social issues when all they want to learn is the grammar of an unfamiliar language. Get over yourself, and get back to basics.” Well, it wasn’t quite that direct, and it was said with a thick Indian accent, but that was the gist of it. I was so impressed, I later took this picture of him.
http://zombietime.com/teaching_as_a_subversive_activity/
WTP,
In regards to the video you posted, a friend of mine whom worked for the IRS, says that it would take 4 people working at $60K a year to generate the tax money to support that one guy. I’d like to slap people who say socialism doesn’t make a country weaker and dumber. This guy need to do us a favor and join the army in hopes of using the GI BIll. The army needs cooks.
“people are in a state of degeneracy and lazy”
I never actually claimed this. People are the same as they have always been, and they respond to incentives as they always have.
What I do claim is that the incentive structure has changed.
Well, that would make them degenerate and lazy. 🙂
True-the state provides significant subsidies and support for the upper classes rather than the past practice of merely serving as their instrument. The lower classes are also getting goods from the state-always a smart move in maintaining social order.
However, the level of incentive for being good or great remains strong. After all, we still seem to have about the same level of awesome people as in the past. But, such folk do what they do regardless of what sort of dole the state is handing out. Very much like the top students-they do what they do even with a bad professor or easy classes.
Mike
You have to update yourself on the empirical evidence, eg. statistics on the areas discussed by your commenters on here. Your post is mostly your opinions without much objective evidence to back them up. I give your essay a B negative, A being the highest.
Not bad-considering I hacked the post out in about 30 minutes between grading stuff and doing committee work. I’ll take the B-. I’ve gotten less for much more.
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/19-11-2012/122849-obama_soviet_mistake-0/