Oh, those party-people, the ones who call themselves Republicans.  They make the sounds your ears want to hear: that someone is on your side, fighting your fight against injustice.  And the injustice of utmost concern to them is the injustice being visited upon you every day of your life: namely, that someone is trying to take your hard-earned money from you, literally grabbing it out of your wallet, like a thief on a dark street in a bad section of town.  Or, a bit less violently, like the federal government.  Same difference, so they say.

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The Republicans know their constituency (a fancy-pants liberal word for “true believers”).  The Republican constituency believes the money they earn is more hallowed than the money other people earn.  Republican money should not be defiled by taxation, but instead should be invested in something called “The Free Market”.  Republicans know (by wisdom passed down from generation to generation) that The Free Market is wiser than any man or woman or collective of decision-makers, such as a representative government.

You would think that Republicans would especially value money that is earned literally by the sweat of one’s brow, by factory workers, farm workers, workers who have so-called “dirty jobs”.  Interestingly, though, the Republican idea of “hard-earned money” is better represented by money made sitting at a computer trading futures on corn, soybeans and West Texas Intermediate crude oil.  Or money made by Goldman Sachs from selling credit default swaps on European debt.  That is the hard-earned money the Republicans respect and want to protect.  That is the money they identify with.  That is the money that will be donated to their next election campaign.

The notion of “your hard-earned money under attack” is just another in a long string of sales pitches that conservative think-tanks have co-opted in order to enlist adherents.  The Republican Party does not care how hard your money was earned.  They are much more interested in soft money, the kind best provided by their investment bank donors.  Or as Republicans running for office like to call them, “job creators”.