Why do people want to vote for Romney?

All this being said I've been curious.  What are the legitimate reasons for voting for these guys?  Clearly we are a liberal bunch, some of us more so than others.  And whenever I watch daily show I see some pretty ridiculous out takes of the GOP placing feet directly into their mouths.  Am I in so deep I can't see it?  Did I literally drink all the kool-ade?

I mean, the BEST i can offer to Mitt is that I can find a reasonable seed for his statement but that the statement itself is undeniably wrong, offensive, and stupid.  Who is voting for these guys?

 

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Let's exclude the super rich and libertarian extremists for a moment, because they constitute so few votes. Who are the Republican base? White, Christian, suburban & rural people in the Midwest and South (more men than women). Why do they not vote Democrat? Forgive my Romney-esque generalizations, but many are following the narrative carefully crafted by GOP strategists, right wing media, and others. Liberals are not real Americans. They want to take away our god, our guns, our success, and our freedoms - and let the "un-Americans" take over - illegals, gays, lazy welfare people, other minorities, etc. Before, the story was the liberals wanted to give the country to the commies, but since then we've beaten the commies, so just hate the liberals directly instead. Liberals want America to be weak and let our enemies win. They want to reverse all the things that they believe made America great. So when that's your opponent, even a douche like Romney looks like your savior. The facts don't even matter at this point.

Romney keeps asking, "Are you better off now than in 2008?" The answer should be a resounding HELL YES! We actually have an economy today. Obama doesn't deserve all the credit for averting depression (and we can blame him for many unmet expectations), but I'm just saying that question is ridiculously rhetorical. Unfortunately for many in the GOP base, they can't directly feel or perceive how good they have it now vs. how bad it could have been with a different leader (can you imagine what would have happened if Romney-Ryan were elected in 2008?). How can having it good hurt this bad? Well compare it to the 1930s. However, the GOP base can perceive that this recovery has been terribly disappointing. I don't even want to call it a recovery because only Wall St. has recovered - it's more like disaster averted, and we're in limbo on where to go next - up or down? The GOP base (and most Americans) saw their savings and home values shrivel, their employment situations become more precarious, the futures of their kids looking more dim, and the country and culture they love ostensibly deteriorating.

And all the while, this popular, cool half-black dude is running the country (into the ground apparently). Some people seem to be winning during the last 4 years, or so Fox says: corrupt Democrat politicians, gays (repeal of DADT), illegals (Dream Act), China (their GDP growth is shrinking severely BTW, but most voters can't define GDP), the Muslims (despite Al Qaeda nearly wiped out and Iranian nukes set back for years), and lazy deadbeats (Obamacare, loosening of welfare eligibility that in fact never happened). So not only is the GOP base hurting, they think the un-Americans are winning. And they can't stand that - some of that backlash, intolerance, and xenophobia fueled the Tea Party.

As we commented in a previous thread, the GOP base feel like the real Americans aren't getting what they are entitled to. They are good, Christian, patriotic, and hard-working - but why is their life so hard and their country so unimpressive? They're doing everything right, but not getting ahead and actually losing ground. Ironically, Obama has said the same thing about the plight of the US middle class and the American Dream. So both must be onto something. Many metrics show how the middle-class has really taken a beating since the 1990's. But what are the root causes of that? We've already discussed the liberal side of that question (what I would like to think of as the "likely explanation"), and I guess the conservative side is: blame Obama and his supporters.

So when someone like Romney comes along with a seemingly polished business background, conservative Christian values (apart from his time in Mass.), and talking about restoring America to greatness, American exceptionalism, never apologizing for America, cutting regulations, creating jobs, lowering taxes, kicking our enemies' asses, strengthening the military, cutting off the deadbeats and tax-and-spend liberals, protecting our freedoms, putting god everywhere, yadda yadda (totally devoid of facts and reality), well that is fairly appealing to the GOP base and some frustrated, desperate voters. Romney wasn't their first choice obviously (the long, ugly GOP nomination process is evidence), but "any Republican" is better than Obama at this point (just as any Dem was better for many fed-up voters in 2008).