Robert Reich hits it on the nail. In effect the Republicans use the strategy of divide and concur. The one thing Mr. Reich did not include in the article is the subliminal racist messages that is included in said division by the calculated use of illegal immigration in the healthcare debate as well as education debate.
Their use of code words that fuel the stereotype of the lazy non-working minority is rampant. There are so many messages from the Right Wing echo chamber demonizing the poor and minority and equating those groups as being the Democratic Party. This makes many Americans whose values are more in line with Democrats shy from that identity.
While the strategy is sad and immoral, it is very effective.
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The Republican Strategy The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class – pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don’t believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.
By splitting working America along these lines, Republicans want Americans to believe that we can no longer afford to do what we need to do as a nation. They hope to deflect attention from the increasing share of total income and wealth going to the richest 1 percent while the jobs and wages of everyone else languish.
Republicans would rather no one notice their campaign to shrink the pie even further with additional tax cuts for the rich – making the Bush tax cuts permanent, further reducing the estate tax, and allowing the wealthy to shift ever more of their income into capital gains taxed at 15 percent.
The strategy has three parts.
The battle over the federal budget.
The first is being played out in the budget battle in Washington. As they raise the alarm over deficit spending and simultaneously squeeze popular middle-class programs, Republicans want the majority of the American public to view it all as a giant zero-sum game among average Americans that some will have to lose
