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Remember, farmers in general are natural Republicans -- you might say they are the base of our base -- unless we find new ways to abuse them, which let us pray, we will not ever do.

I wish this were true.

But it isn't.

Most farmers say they're Republicans. But I can tell you from my personal experience of nearly 30 years writing software for farmers, farmers are on the government tit more than any other group. And like every group on the tit they have their own rationalizations for why in their case it's justified.

I can't tell you how many times I've tried to tell farmers in small operations in the upper Midwest and Northeastern United States that they need to get off the subsidies, which are destroying farms. I've preached this in milking parlors, hogbarns, DHIA banquets, Holstein Association Meetings, Extension presentations, and award ceremonies for AI studs. Because our subsidies are based on production, they reward large operators who already enjoy significant competitive advantages over family farms because of economies of scale and retail bargaining leverage.

You try to tell a small farmer that subsidies (of various kinds, some well disguised, some outright bribes) are the reason that so many people who aren't worth a crap as farmers are able to stay in business and drive down profitability for everyone, and their response universally is: "You can't take away our subsidies. We'll be ruined."

Sorry, buddy. I love farmers. I personally come from a long line of farmers, who've been in Southeastern PA since before there even was a United States of America, and since I left academia, writing software for farmers has been my life. But they're only our friends as long as they keep getting money from the government and you can't convince them otherwise. Just look at what happened to Republican Senators in the 1982 mid-terms, when Reagan tried to phase out subsidies or when Gingrich passed the Freedom to Farm Act. Those measures were repealed with an absolute vengence, and here we go, yet again, year after year, with a huge Farm Bill.

FredZarguna: "Sorry, buddy. I love farmers. I personally come from a long line of farmers...
But they're only our friends as long as they keep getting money from the government and you can't convince them otherwise"

Oh, dear, do you ever sound confused, but where do we even begin to straighten you out?
How about here?

First of all, if your typical farmer is not a "real Republican" then there's no such thing as a "real Republican" -- there are only those who admit to being Democrats versus those who pretend otherwise.
So put that in your pipe and smoke it. ;-)
Second, of the nation's 2.1 million farms, 60% receive no Federal subsidies at all.
So for you to claim they somehow won't give up their subsidies, is a bit, ahem, uninformed.
Third, the key point which everyone pretends to not understand is that virtually all Federal "subsidies" go to the highest income farms -- the top 10% of all farms receive 80% of all "subsidies".
Fourth, and this takes some digging, the total value of all farm "subsidies" equates almost exactly to total taxes paid by farmers -- so those who pay the most in taxes receive the most back in "subsidies", but no group, on average, receives more in "subsidies" than they pay in taxes.
So, finally, farm "subsidies" in no way equate to other government welfare programs, but are in fact what they may or may not say directly: government tax incentives, used to skew the market and encourage certain categories of production over others.
As such, they are equivalent to other incentives in other industries -- "green" energy comes to mind...

Bottom line: of course those large farmers you typically deal with want their "subsidies" to continue, not so much because they couldn't live without them, but rather because so many other industries receive similar preferential treatment, why should farmers be singled out for punishment?

The obvious solution is to reduce all tax rates, in exchange for eliminating government market-skewing "subsidies", a solution most Republican farmers would happily accept, but which would eliminate the Democrat government's role in picking winners and rewarding their backers.
So that's when you'd expose the difference between real Republicans and Democrats who just pretend to be something else.