Affluent Voters Switch Brands - Stands on 'So-Called Moral Issues' Prove Costly for Republicans

It is about time that educated, affluent voters leave the anti-knowledge, anti-equality GOP and focus on those who seek to move the country forward, not back to the 19th Century. This Wall Street Journal story (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119518268221495363.html?mod=hpp_us_editors_picks) shows that the GOP's ties to the Christianist lunatic fringe are beginning to take a serious toll. I for one hope the trend continues unabated. Here are some story highlights:

Jim Kelley, . . . , looks like one of those plutocrats whom Democrats are talking about taxing more. He buys companies for the $7 billion private-equity firm Vestar Capital Partners, with headquarters on New York's Park Avenue. Mr. Kelley, 53, is writing big campaign checks for Barack Obama and other Democrats -- and taxes don't make his top 10 list of critical political issues.

In this newly competitive state and elsewhere, Republicans are struggling to reassure their nervous religious-right base, while Democrats are profiting from increasing support among high-income voters. And that support may be more impervious to warnings of higher taxes than some Republicans assume. "The Democratic Party stands more for creating equal opportunity," says Mr. Kelley. He says the party "speaks more to me on issues of the environment, and even more to me on national security," while he criticizes Republican stands on "so-called moral issues" such as gay marriage.

"There's a difference in the type of giver that I've seen," observes Kirk Dornbush, a veteran Democratic fund-raiser who runs an Atlanta-based biotechnology firm. In the past, he explains, affluent donors from business or the professions were often "people that needed access." Now, he says, Democrats are benefiting from concerns over America's "loss of standing in the world," Mr. Bush's environmental policies, and concern over the possibility of recession. An increasing number of high-income Americans "are yearning for something different. And something different is the Democrats."

"Twenty-five years ago...business could safely vote Republican and believe that their interests in business were going to be taken care of," says Neil Westergaard, editor of the Denver Business Journal. "As the Republican Party has changed, I think that became less [true]."