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Revenge of the Republican Unemployed?

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Unemployment Benefits Extension fails to pass cloture vote with ‘only’ 55 Senators in favor

“We’re shocked, shocked, to see gambling meanspiritedness here!”

– Unemployed Republican Voters Looking at the Republicans in the U.S. Senate

The Long-Term Unemployed Sound Off: ‘I Will Never Vote For A Republican Again’

The people who have been left without that support are incensed, and the anger reaches across party lines. In an email to ThinkProgress, Peter LeClair, an out of work investment manager from New York, said he has been a lifelong Republican. But he “will never vote for a Republican, as long as I live” after watching them say that relying on unemployment benefits makes people dependent. “I am incensed with this Rand Paul,” he said, who has said extending the benefits would “do a disservice” to those who were relying on them. “He says I am lazy… I am not lazy, how dare he. He doesn’t even know me.”

LeClair says he has sent out over 2,000 resumes and been “rejected on a daily basis.” The benefits, which he pointed out he paid into while he worked for more than 20 years, were the only think keeping him “glued together financially.” He said he is “absolutely shocked and dismayed” with Republicans, reiterating, “I will never, so help me god, vote for a Republican again, period.”

Please, Republicans subvehiculated by the party you voted for despite knowing of their knavish ways: please remember this feeling in November.

– Democrat Who Would Like Everyone to Have a Safety Net


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/ 8 Comments

8 comments

  1. JanF

    I would hope that folks would get out of their right-wing echo chamber and that working people who vote for Republicans finally realize that they are not served well by the people they put in power.

  2. JanF

    The GOP’s Risky Rebuff to Long-Term Unemployed

    Republicans who are playing politics with long-term unemployment benefits in the midwinter of a record-slow recovery are engaged in a very dangerous game, especially if they think they’re up to their usual tactic of pleasing their base by rooting out wasteful “welfare queens” and the like.

    That’s because today’s long-term unemployed make up a substantial part of the Republican Party’s base. Economists say it’s false to suggest that most of those who’ve been out of work for six months or more are urban ne’er-do-wells looking for handouts, and that the benefits they receive only induce them to stay on the dole. On the contrary: The data show that today’s long-term unemployed, more than in the past, cut across every age, racial, ethnic, and educational group and are mainly suffering from a slow-growth economy that simply is not providing enough jobs for those eager and ready to take them.

    The long-term unemployed are also more likely now to live the GOP’s geographic strongholds. They now make up 26.8 percent of the total in the West (versus 19.9 percent in 2007), and they are slightly more likely to live in the South (34.8 percent now versus 31.7 percent in 2007) instead of in the Midwest (18.9 percent now versus 29.1 percent in 2007).

    We shall have to wait to see if god-guns-gays can still hold those Republicans dissed by their own party in thrall or if they will break over economic issues.

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