Have You Ever Wondered What Compells Your Conservative Relatives to Vote...

[Brewman_Jax]

Have You Ever Wondered What Compells Your Conservative Relatives to Vote the Way They Do?

http://www.alternet.org/culture/have-you...ay-they-do

From the article:

Quote:By the time you’re reading this, the 2012 election will have been decided, and we’ll all have had our fill of the partisan rancor that’s become commonplace in politics. Perhaps you yourself have had the experience of getting lost in an argument in which you became exasperated that people on the other side couldn’t see what was so obvious, despite your best efforts to reason with them.

When caught in the stalemate of a political debate, the advice of Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion and a social psychologist in the New York University Stern School of Business, is to save our breath–or at least recognize that what we think we’re arguing about isn’t really what we’re arguing about. Haidt believes that most political debates, at least the way they’re usually conducted, are useless because the underlying issues aren’t what they appear to be on the surface. Politics, he says, is ultimately about our stance on fundamental moral beliefs and group loyalties–things that aren’t usually influenced by facts, figures, or rational policy debate. In the interview that follows, he offers a perspective on why we vote the way that we do that differs from what you’re likely to read about in our mainstream election-season coverage.

...

The interview follows. An interesting read. The author shows what we already knew, or guessed, about those on the other side of the political divide.

[cannae1]

True enough. Fact and logic have little to do with politics; and, what passes for 'principles' can, very frequently, be called 'attitudes'.
It is very difficult to argue with an attitude or a value, as neither has much of a relationship with reality ( there is such a thing). Which is where power comes in.
And what you do with the power if you have it.

[Fire1]

Sadly, my conservative relatives were delusional.

[sandnsea]

Belief systems. Everybody has one. Been sayin' that for years. Even if your reality doesn't match your belief system, say you're on food stamps; if your belief system says people should make their own way, then you'll vote for people with that belief system. How you think things are supposed to be, even if your personal life doesn't match it.

[cannae1]

sandnsea, quite true.

[achieve]

I am one of the fortunate ones. I have no conservative relatives or friends. We're all liberals.

[Brewman_Jax]

They and most of the rabid racist RW aren't mentally ill, they're mentally small.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

I wonder what compels my mom to keep voting Republican when she agrees with 99% of what I say about how big business keeps shafting people like us, dislikes the health care insurance industry (she works as a registrar in a major hospital) and thinks that the Republican Party has gotten more extreme in recent years- yet, even though she had misgivings about Sarah Palin and admitted that she wasn't all that crazy about Mitt Romney, she still cast votes for them in the end.

[72ptheriot]

Greed is the one that comes to mind and just straight out dumb fear.