RNC: Voters see GOP as 'scary' and 'out of touch'

[All Along The Watchtower]

Social conservatives are the electoral base of the GOP, and they control the party in pretty much every state (if not, indeed, every state). They are truly in a Catch-22.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Moving to the center on social issues won't help the GOP. It'll just send their white working class voters into the hands of the Democrats, who actually would do a better job representing them anyway, at least on pocketbook issues.

How many white working-class Republicans think like that though? "Oh I'd vote for the Democrats, except I'm a social conservative." In my experience, people who are right-wing on social issues are also usually pretty damn right-wing on economics, regardless of income (this is especially true in places like the South or the West). And as opebo often alludes to, a lot of the economic AND social conservatism of working-class and working-poor whites is due to racism (and also paired with sexism, particularly among white men, and xenophobia/nativism regarding immigrants).

[All Along The Watchtower]

I'd say, however, that many working-class white conservatives are more populistic than they are right-wing. They might chant "stop the spending", but only have a vague understanding of the actual issue of austerity. However, the GOP has mastered the art of postwar propaganda (and has won the war on how the economy is framed, so most voters of both parties buy the idea that austerity is necessary and beneficial) and so currently has a lock on a clueless and formerly Democratic bloc of voters.

Yet the GOP does not have a lock on working-class whites in general, though-which we need to remember.