I'm a tad confused. Weren't you earlier (in this thread or another one) arguing that outsourcing jobs was better for this country?
I'll assume this was a rhetorical answer intended to explain the viewpoint of 'average' supporter of Palin.
It was. But even if outsourcing jobs is better "for the country," that doesn't mean that it's better for any specific one of us personally. People tend to vote -- justifiably -- for their own self-interest instead of for the interest of a watered-down group of people that is likely to end up hurting the specific voter.
Indeed, that's why "pork" exists in the first place. The famous "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska would [have] put $400 million dollars into the local economy through construction money and service[d] an island with fifty residents. But the bridge works out to be something like $800 in federal construction spending for every man, woman, and child in Alaska -- better than the tax rebate! Ted Stevens was popular precisely because he was good at bringing that kind of pork to Alaskans, and serving the people with whom he identified.
If not, I'd say that the above is a false dichotomy, in that I don't think the Republican line up will consist of corporate executives on the whole.
No, but a large number of them are corporate executives or professional long0term politicians. The Senate has been described many times as a "Millionaires club," where most of the members are more beholden to the special interest groups that fund their candidacy than their actual constituents. In other words, people who don't understand the problems their constituents face, or aren't willing to take them seriously enough (in the views of those same constituents).
A good example of that is the high unemployment rate that was
deliberately maintained in the 1980s by Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. He hiked interest rates high enough to cut the money supply to the bone, and shot unemployment through the roof. Of coure, Volcker wasn't an elected official -- indeed, few elected officials would have survived setting policy that threw nearly ten percent of the electorate out of work.
But what kind of a person -- other than a salaried banker type -- would consider ten percent unemployment a good thing?
I'd also say that living through something may lend understanding of how something hurts/sucks, but it doesn't mean they have the economic and political understanding of how to fix something, and it would actually bias them towards not recognizing that perhaps something shouldn't/cannot be fixed.
And that's why people would vote for Palin, or any other populust who says "I understand your problem and will fix it" over someone who says "I see that you're in trouble, but I deny that it's a problem and I believe it should not be fixed."
