"Republicans have started to care about income inequality"

[applegrove]

Republicans have started to care about income inequality

By Catherine Rampell Opinion writer at the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell-republicans-have-started-to-care-about-income-inequality/2015/01/22/f1ee7686-a276-11e4-903f-9f2faf7cd9fe_story.html

"SNIP....................

Maybe to broaden the tent for 2016 by appealing to people who feel “left behind” by the recovery. But the poor are not exactly the most politically engaged constituency and seem unlikely to switch allegiances. To put it in Dos Equis terms: The poor don’t always vote, but when they do, they vote Democratic.

Maybe it’s the result of rebounding economic growth and declining unemployment, which means Republicans have to be more precise about exactly which part of Obama’s record is vulnerable to criticism. Although of course the rise in inequality long predates Obama’s time in the White House; the top 1 percent’s share of national income has been trending upward since Obama was in high school.


Or maybe it’s really more about reassuring Republicans’ core middle-class voters, who might suspect that Republican-led cuts to safety-net programs such as food stamps and unemployment insurance are, well, heartless. For the “compassionate conservatism” reboot to be convincing and guilt-alleviating this time around, though, Republicans need to offer strong anti-poverty proposals of their own. So far — with the exception of Paul Ryan’s plan last year — we’ve mostly heard more of the same tax-cutting, deregulating shtick, whose relevance to inequality and poverty is tenuous at best.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have reconfigured their messaging as well, to focus more on the middle class than the destitute. While the State of the Union speech touched on policies intended to lift those at the bottom — increasing the minimum wage, for example — Obama’s rhetoric mostly emphasized “middle-class economics,” abandoning his previous “bottom-up economics” coinage. Even programs that are usually associated with the poor, such as community college access, have been pitched as a middle-class benefit. And he didn’t even mention one of the starring, bleeding-heart, anti-poverty promises from his speeches the past two years: universal pre-K.


....................SNIP"

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. No, they haven't.

The words are meaningless when not tied to specific policy changes that actually demonstrate that the words mean something.

John Stewart pointed this out just a night or so back, when he showed that all of the supposedly newly compassionate Republican candidates then turned around and endorsed the EXACT same policies pushed by Mitt Romney in his 47% run, all of which would hurt the middle class and poor while profiting the rich.

'Messaging' doesn't keep us from being foreclosed on. 'Messaging' doesn't feed us or those we care about. 'Messaging' is merely a cynical attempt to manipulate while maintaining the status quo of inequality. We need real policy changes, no just nice 'messaging'.

[pampango]

2. They have embraced concern for income inequality as a talking point but offer the same old

policies as a 'solution' to the problem. IOW, they are trying to use income inequality as another scare tactic - the GOP specialty - while changing about their pro-1% agenda.

[Javaman]

3. the royalists fear the serf uprising and want to appear that they sympathize with their plight. nt