Working Class (White) Voters in Louisiana, Across the South....and Other Places

Why Do Working Persons Vote Against Their Own Interests?

 

As a citizen and voter in the state of Louisiana, I can't help but notice that republicans control the whole state government in a state that not too long ago was a deep blue state. What has happened to cause to cause such a drastic change in this state? How is it that working people can vote against their own best interests in voting for people who belong to a political party that only represents the interests of the very wealthy and corporations? The state of Louisiana had a balanced budget with a surplus of dollars with the surplus constantly increasing when the last democratic governor left office, much like the U.S. had when the last democratic president left office before the republicans took control of the national government. In both cases the republicans have destroyed the tax base and turned the surpluses into deficits. How did they do this? On the national scene, they destroyed financial and business regulations, allowing business to do whatever they pleased and allowing banks to use worker's retirement/pension plans to make risky investments. Then when the risky investments bottomed out, they used the pension plans to pay of their debts. In Louisiana and other republican controlled states, they gave away the surplus money in tax breaks to corporations and the very wealthy until there was no money left to pay state debts. And now at the close of his two turns Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal is about to leave the state in a humongous hole for whoever the next governor happens to be.

Like President Bill Clinton left a national surplus when he left office, so did Governor Kathleen Blanco, former governor of Louisiana. Taxes were flowing from oil sales and the state tobacco was to flowing for 20 years. The state was running like a well oiled machine. But some how the citizens of Louisiana became restless and dissatisfied that things were going so well. What was it that made the citizens of this state turn their backs on prosperity? I remember it well.

 On the scene came a man named Rush Limbaugh. He was an abrasive, loudmouthed and some would say, charismatic man. My take on him was" if Adolph Hitler was charismatic, Limbaugh is charismatic". He came on the scene preaching against the welfare state, but his aim was at black people. And he was very pro-business, which didn't hurt his appeal either. With the backing of the business people, he now had a platform to spew all the "welfare state"garbage he wanted. With his anti-black, pro-business message, he gained an audience all across the country. All of this coincided with the ordeals of Bill Clinton as he was caught in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It kind of became a perfect storm. It was in those years that many infamous people and groups began to make names for them selves with corporate money flowing to them like rivers; people like Matt drudge, Linda Tripp Laura Ingram. And there were also some preachers included in this group; preachers like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and others. It was at that time that Fox news, with the like of Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, began also to gain viewership. Also at that time the corporate news organizations began to bow to pressure from the right wing after Dan rather was forced to resign because of a news story that some claim was false, but was actually true. During the runup to the Iraq War, the corporate news organizations began to accept any thing the Bush administration said almost without question. There were falsehoods about yellowcake uranium, aluminum tubes to be used to make nuclear missiles, WMD, warplanes hidden in the sand, dirty bombs and many more lies and rumors the media ran with accepted as true without verified confirmation. It was during those days that the republican party was at the peak of it's power and hatemongers along with the warmongers were their cheerleaders. Make no mistake about it, they are still very powerful now., but at that time no one dared to confront them. The democrats were sorely afraid to challenge them on anything. With a mix of hatred, racism, nationalism, fascism, bigotry and hypocrisy, they DOMINATED the airwaves for about 15 years. Their reign of terror is still not over yet, but it seems that many people are finally waking up to the damage they have done to this country.

But in Louisiana it has taken until Governor Jindal has run the state into the ground, and many of the things he has done will have to be reversed in order to bring it out of the tailspin that it is in .It happens every time we have a republican governor. The state's economy is run into a ditch and a democratic governor has to refloat the state again. But as soon as the state in in good shape again, another republican is voted in. If you keep doing the same thing, you keep getting the same results.

So the question is still 'why do working class (white) people vote republican when republicans don't represent working class people"?
The answer might be found here. Many in all of the southern states have never accepted that the south was wrong to have slavery. They felt and still feel that black people are not their equal and should be subordinate to them. So from the point of the Civil War to they present they have been searching for a way to bring this about again. That's how the KKK and many other white /Christian supremacist organizations camcame to be in the south