[jeffkrol]

2010 Elections:

2008

Seniors weren't just more motivated to vote in 2010 (from 15 percent to 21 percent of the total), but they swung 22 points in the GOP's direction -- the largest by far of any group. Apparently, they didn't want Obama's death panels targeting them. Or something.

So how does the GOP repay seniors for their election-winning vote?

The House has rejected a Democratic effort to pay Social Security recipients $250 to make up for the lack of a cost-of-living increase for next year.

Democrats argued that the payment was needed to offset the hardships of seniors facing a second consecutive year without an increase.

But Republicans contended that the nation couldn't afford the estimated $14 billion cost of the one-time payment, and that the two-year freeze comes after seniors received a significant boost in 2009.

Got that, seniors? The nation can "afford" over $700 billion in new debt by giving millionaires an unecessary extension of their budget-busting tax cuts, but NO SOUP FOR YOU!

Too bad only 38 percent of you were smart enough to see that.

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

[Nesster]

I may have posted stuff related to the Republican strategy of buying the seniors via the Medicare drug benefit - this was due to the Bush administration's calculation that they needed the senior vote (think FLA in the first election) in order to remain in office.
Thereafter the Reps discovered that the seniors won't stay bought - they need to be re-bought every election.
In 2010 the Reps successfully pinned medicare cuts and social security threats on the Dems.

This particular vote, or anything in the near future, won't matter much in 2012. By then, despite their rhetoric now, the Reps will be serving up some other give-away to the seniors. In other words, the game is to deny any credit to the other party, while pinning any blame on them, and then have the last thing on people's minds being either the last cut/threat (pinned on the opposition) or the last gift (taking full credit) at election time. Both parties try to do this; of late the Republicans just do it better.

[Ratmagiclady]

Seems the GOP has been allowed too long to get away with acting on the realization that you don't have to actually do anything beneficial or non-harmful as long as you confuse and deceive and divert about how it's happened /happening, and get people throwing 'blame' around.

They're not even being subtle about it. I think they and the corporate media and who's behind both have decided that anything at all that makes people angry and divides them is good for *them,* and to hell with the rest of the country and world and future.