The Republicans and Trump use a technique much like what the con artist uses. They make a list of people that have the opinion that they’ve been let down by the rest of society. This list they prioritize on which groups of people that are the most important. Then they analyze each group to find out what the promise they can make to them to get them to vote for Republicans. For instance, with the coal miners they promised to bring back coal, but coal is never going to be brought back due to economic reasons. The Republicans know this, but they know that giving hope to some group of people with promises will get votes even though the promises will never be fulfilled. This is just like a street corner gambler, who promises the sucker will win big money, knowing full well that he’s going to take every last penny from the sucker. It’s sort of like Las Vegas, where all the glitz and glamor attracts a lot of people with the promise of making a lot of money, but they don’t get rich in Las Vegas from letting people win. Somebody has to lose, and we all know who they are.
Some of the groups that they promised to are:
Pro-lifers – Who want to eliminate Roe V Wade. They want to go back to the times when illegal abortions were killing two instead of one.
Anti-gay marriage – The equal rights laws have been applied to prohibit laws discriminating against gay marriage. The religious groups still hold that gay marriage is evil.
Evangelical Christians – the Religious Right – who want someone who promises that they’re going to receive a better life.
The coal miners, which I have already mentioned. If we keep on burning coal the whole world will be unlivable.
The anti-immigration group – the Nationalists. They’re the ones that seem to think that the illegal immigrants have stolen the workers’ jobs and want to stop illegals. But the anti-immigrationists have waited until it’s too late, and they’re trying to close the gate after all the cows have got out. There are 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States, and it’s going to be a very very long time before they ever deport even a small fraction of them. It’s the biggest whack-a-mole game in the world: for everyone they deport, four more come in. As long as there are corruption and drug cartels south of the border, there are going to be illegals who want to come to the US. The only way to stop them is to fix the injustices south of the border.
The smallest group of suckers, but are far overrepresented by the amount of money they spend are the wealthy. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars on each election to try to influence voters. They’re the ones who pay lots of money to the superPACs to hide where the ‘dark money’ is coming from. Why they try to hide the money is because they are guilty of giving their money away to influence peddling. More like they _are_ guilty of graft and corruption.
Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse brought this up in the hearing to confirm Judge Coney Barrett. The dark money goes to lawyers who write up Amicus briefs that are reviewed by the courts. These amicus briefs strongly favor the side from where the dark money is coming from. These amicus briefs are a way of peddling influence on the court system.
Another group of people plagued by FUD (fear, uncertainty,doubt) are the Second Amendment Gun Rights advocates. They’re so deathly afraid that the “left wing extremists” are going to take away their gun rights that they will lie, they’ll tell you all sorts of extreme tales to make you fear that the second amendment is being abolished. I think that the main way the NRA gets people to pay their membership dues is to use scare tactics to cause Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt in their members.
Another group of people who are quite common are the anti-big government folks. They’re afraid that the bigger the government gets, the higher their taxes will be. Actually government isn’t the problem. The problem is that some branches of government are not big enough so the IRS, for example, doesn’t have enough manpower to collect billions of dollars in unpaid taxes. Tax cheats are getting away with billions of dollars. Meanwhile we have wasted three trillion dollars in a pointless war in the Middle East, which just keeps soaking up money like a sponge. Fossil fuels are on a decline — and it’s time we get out of the Middle East — they have never wanted us there to begin with. We would be better off if we dropped leaflets over the country offering bounties on the heads of the dictators and Taliban leaders who are causing problems.
There must be other groups whom I have not included. Which? The Republicans demonize the ‘Left’ or ‘Liberals’ as if they are going to turn the US into the Soviet Socialists. Obviously that is not going to happen.