As we have said HERE, HERE, and HERE – Republicans have been actively trying to kill the social safety net.  There are actual votes to that affect…and while Americans think it can’t happen – IT ABSOLUTELY CAN.  And now we know why…in the days of Ronald Reagan – there was a majority Republican support for helping those who can’t help themselves…today – not so much.  America has become a country that is now about “lookout for #1″.

Look out for yourself. Watch your own back. Get your own piece of bread.

There is no “love thy neighbor” in the Republican party which I find terribly ironic given they consider themselves the party of this caring, considerate loving God.  And yet – these god fearing voters who preach the words of Jesus … want so desperately to see tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts in programs like medicaid, medicare, food lunch programs, rape crisis centers etc.  It’s absolutely vile.

Pew says Republican support for the safety net is the lowest it has been in modern history – article HERE.

Republicans and Democrats are furthest apart in their opinions about the social safety net. There are partisan differences of 35 points or more in opinions about the government’s responsibility to care for the poor, whether the government should help more needy people if it means adding to the debt and whether the government should guarantee all citizens enough to eat and a place to sleep.

On all three measures, the percentage of Republicans asserting a government responsibility to aid the poor has fallen in recent years to 25-year lows.

Just 40% of Republicans agree that “It is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves,” down 18 points since 2007. In three surveys during the George W. Bush administration, no fewer than half of Republicans said the government had a responsibility to care for those unable to care for themselves. In 1987, during the Ronald Reagan’s second term, 62% expressed this view.

But this part from Pew is surprising to me:

In contrast to the widening partisan gap, the new survey finds neither growing class differences in fundamental political values, nor increasing class resentment. As in the past, a substantial majority of Americans agree that “the rich just get richer while the poor get poorer.” Yet there are no indications of increasing hostility toward the rich and successful. And there are no signs that lower-income people have become more cynical about an individual’s power to control their destiny or the value of hard work.

As NPR notes – the Republican party is the most “conservative” it has been in over a century.  Article HERE.

“This is an entirely objective statistical procedure. The graphs just reflect what comes out of the computer. Howard Rosenthal and I, we’ve been working on something called Nominate. This does all the Congresses simultaneously, which allows you to study change over time.

“The short version would be since the late 1970s starting with the 1976 election in the House the Republican caucus has steadily moved to the right ever since. It’s been a little more uneven in the Senate. The Senate caucuses have also moved to the right. Republicans are now furtherest to the right that they’ve been in 100 years.

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