"For reasons that most of us can't fathom, they believe that they will somehow get a better shake from the Republicans."

In the UK I believe that people vote for the Tories (i.e. the Right Wing Conservative Party) because they believe that that party is more likely to 'punish' those people who are perceived to be of a 'lower social status' than them. Pick a random person off the street and attempt to discuss politics with him/her and you will probably get a diatribe about "benefits cheats" and "social security scroungers" or, occasionally, "immigrants who are stealing our jobs/country". Of course, a lot of this rhetoric comes from the right wing press, but those unscrupulous bastards know exactly which 'buttons' to press!

I'm amazed that there has been so much "banker bashing" lately (things must be much, much worse than we have been told!). The average 'benefits cheats' obsessive is usually perfectly content to allow the 'high ups' get away with anything they like!