You remember when you were in gradeschool, and some jerkass member of the opposite sex made your life hell? And when you complained about it, you were told "that means s/he has a crush on you?" And it seemed like total bullshit because what kind of childhood sociopath would act like a raging bag of dicks toward people they liked? And if they're a raging bag of dicks when they like you, what truly awful things have they done to people they actually hate?
Yeah, I never understood that explanation, either, until I started following politics. Because the GOP has exactly that kind of crush on the poor.
On the one hand, they hate poor people. Because they buy into the whole "But...But...Bootstraps!" thing which makes life a lot easier for them when they can ignore that you have to have bootstraps in order to pull yourself up by them. So it's a quick, easy way to feel superior to others no matter how much your life sucks otherwise. Your wife may be filing for divorce because she caught you banging your secretary and her husband because you left your webcam on, and your two-point-five children have cut you off because you couldn't put down the golf club and the bourbon long enough to be involved in their lives, but at least you're not that poor fucker who had to deal with your angry phone call when the cable went out.
After all, you're responsible and hardworking enough to not have to deal with assholes like you all day. Go you.
On the other hand, Republicans love them some poverty, and they will be all too happy to count the ways if you let them. All of their policies are carefully crafted to ensure that people who are already broke will stay that way. Because poor people tend to be too tired from having to make major financial decisions all day, every day to think about all the ways they're being screwed.
It's part of a larger sick system that helps people who don't deserve it stay in power no matter how absurd their positions seem to the rest of us.
It's far less work to slyly manipulate people into needing you than to make them want to stay in your corner by being someone they like and respect. Being a likeable, respectable person (or political ideology) requires empathy, compassion, and concern for other people. For bona fide assholes like the current Republican party, that's too much work. The sick system is easier. And unfortunately, a lot more reliable.
For proof that it works, look no further than this study: the poorest people in the country also tend to be the staunchest conservatives. When you look at the outline of what a sick system is -- mental exhaustion (policies that gut social programs, and national financial crises manufactured purely by political obstructionism) peppered with intermittent morsels of bread-and-circuses-style temporary reward (tax breaks, religion, and patriotic fervor), it suddenly makes sense how people could feel in any way loyal to a political ideology that exploits and abuses them and laughs all the way to the bank.
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