Why Would Workers Support Teabagger Candidates ?

The Republicans have been appealing to working and middle class voters for years by shifting their focus from the economic issues to social issues.   They get workers upset by talking about such social issues as flag-burning, creationism, homosexuality, prayer in schools, and the biggest scare word of all -- socialism.   Then after getting votes on those issues, most of which they can't or won't do anything about, they institute economic policies that steal from those same voters and give to the rich.

And the worst of all are the teabagger candidates.   While the teabaggers rail against big government and giant financial corporations and talk about keeping government from destroying Social Security and Medicare, the candidates they have been fooled into supporting nearly all support policies that favor the rich over workers.   They want policies that would cut taxes for the rich and put that burden on ordinary folks.   And they favor even removing the few safeguards that Americans have so that the rich can get even richer on the backs of workers.

Consider the candidacy of teabagger candidate Joe Miller (pictured), who is running for the United States Senate in Alaska.   While he has duped many ordinary people into believing he is some kind of working class hero, his actual policy beliefs would destroy the few benefits and safeguards that working people have been able to get in this country.   Here are a few of his radical beliefs:

* He thinks Social Security is unconstitutional and would like to abolish it.   He would replace it with a private system that would leave the elderly at the whims of Wall Street.

* He thinks unemployment insurance is unconstitutional.   He would leave laid-off workers in this recession without any way to provide for their families.

* He thinks Medicare is unconstitutional.   He would abolish it and throw the elderly into the uncaring hands of the private insurance companies -- that is the few elderly who could afford the outrageous premiums charged by those companies.   Most of the elderly would have no health care insurance at all.

* He thinks that the minimum wage is unconstitutional and would like to abolish it.   He would throw all workers to the whims of employers who could then offer wages far below what it costs to support a family.   He doesn't understand that even high wages are supported and depend on the minimum wage.

* He wants to repeal the new health care law and return the country to the days when private companies could deny health insurance for pre-existing conditions and continue to price many millions of Americans out of having any health care coverage at all.

And Joe Miller is not an anomaly among the teabagger candidates.   Look under the surface of any of them and you'll find they all have pro-rich and anti-worker economic policy beliefs.   A vote for Joe Miller (Alaska), Sharron Angle (Nevada), Christine O'Donnell (Delaware), Marco Rubio (Florida), Ron Johnson (Wisconsin), Pat Toomay (Pennsylvania), or any other teabagger candidate is a vote against American workers (and the middle class).

I am appalled that anyone but the super-rich (who their policies favor) would even consider voting for these teabagger candidates.