Thomas Edsall’s brilliant piece this morning provides one of the best syntheses of the cynical and cruel bets that the Bircherized GOP is making this election – that White Middle & working class voters are very ripe for the ultimate coup of giving up the Social Safety net and willfully committing economic suicide. By choosing Paul Ryan, the GOP are signaling that they have the best agent and loudest megaphone to amplify White working class economic insecurity into weaponized racial resentment to yield political gold.
As Edsall shows, GOP already counting on winning the election with energized White voters only, now cynically signal to use Paul Ryan (the very architect of dismantling the social safety net) to score high marks with White blue collar workers. They are counting on converting Ryan from the flesh and blood congressman with an actual dismal legislative trail, into an airbrushed cipher to accomplish this feat; a retroactive Rorschach Test.
We liberals see Ryan posing the ultimate conundrum for blue collar White workers: fall in love with their executioner or preserve their own economic interests.
But GOP are betting that they have the Corporate & SuperPac backed mirage machinery ready to steer the outcome, facts be damned.
What are those facts anyway?…