Emotional Hot-Button Issues Define GOP Support

I often wonder to myself why so many Americans who are either retired and actively receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits or are approaching that time in their lives are vehemently pro-tea party and staunchly support Republicans in their political leanings. After all, those politicians are the ones that most radically want to change these important institutions in a negative way for their recipients. I mean, from where I'm at at age 54, I feel that just when I'm about to retire, they will turn Social Security and Medicare into a sorry, sad joke, with greatly reduced benefits and much higher costs. I'm not about to vote for any politician who espouses the kind of anti-retiree views of Rick Perry or Eric Cantor. But that brings me back to those citizens who do support them. Why?

Last week's special election in southern Brooklyn, where a vacant Democratic congressional seat they had held since 1920 went over to a Republican, provides a major clue. The GOP winner targeted the largely Jewish community living there by engaging in Muslim-baiting, actually showing an Islamic mosque superimposed on Ground Zero in one of his campaign ads. And it worked, apparently convincing enough people that by being anti-Muslim, he was somehow looking out for them. This in spite of whatever issues on which he stands in diametric opposition to the majority of the voters who put him into office (including wrecking Social Security and Medicare beyond recognition). He found an emotional hot-button issue and exploited it to victory.

And that just might be the answer to my earlier question: many, if not most voters have hot-button issues that a candidate must be on their side with if he or she wants their votes. So a voter's fear about having their guns taken away from them may prompt them to vote for the Republicans more than the Democrats, as would someone with overriding concerns about legalized abortion. Or, as was the case in New York, a fear that the Muslims are coming to take over. Or that our nation is to suffer divine judgement and punishment if we give gays the basic human rights that others have. Sometimes stances on hot-button issues may seem so over-the-top that they are dismissed as being foolish or bigoted. But they still translate into votes for the candidate who is successful at exploiting them. It seems illogical that people would allow themselves to vote against their own best interests because of emotionally-charged, irrelevant issues, but then again we're humans and not Vulcans...

On the other hand, someone standing back looking at the situation could also point a finger a me and say that I'm making Social Security and Medicare into hot-button issues. Maybe that's so, but don't you think they just might carry some true relevance to our lives, if not right now then in the foreseeable future?

I have a novel idea: let's get ourselves all worked up over the issues that REALLY MATTER, all right??!!