To give you a little perspective on where I am coming from, I was born in the 1950s in rural Northwestern Pennsylvania. My father was a dairy farmer, and we, like most around us, were Republicans. Now, at that time, being a Republican meant that you were fiscally conservative. You paid for things with Cash as much as possible, and you were reluctant to overextend yourself. This went for the government as well.
But being a Republican did not mean that you would not take money from government programs when they were made available to you. My Father had a term called the “Kennedy Crop,” which was for the fields that he set aside to mow and leave and not harvest. We did not sign up our best acreage for Kennedy; we would most likely choose the least productive soil. In a sense, we were building up the soil by letting the crop decay and working to enrich the soil for the future.
From that, you can see that while we may not have agreed with the policy, it does not prevent us from participating. Farmers tended to be practical and pragmatic in those ways. While we may disagree with the program, we would still join if it benefitted us.
In 1968, my father asked me who I would vote for, and I told him Nixon. The reason is that I felt the Republicans were better at helping the economy and making a better future. (and also Nixon was running on the promise to end the war in Vietnam)
Unfortunately, we all know how that ended. Picking someone who talks a good story does not mean they can do it or will always be a “good” guy.
Lesson Learned. Watch what they do. Don’t listen to what they say.