Here's why people vote Republican

I often wonder how members of the political right can cling to their beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Some 41 percent of Republicans believe President Obama was foreign born, 46 percent think he is a Muslim, and even after all these years 50 percent of Republicans still think that Iraq had WMD when George Bush invaded. I was determined to discover why this is, and I think I hit upon it.

Geneticists at the Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have been working on the Neanderthal Project since 2005. Recently they compared the Neanderthal genome to the human genome and discovered that 4 percent of the human population has Neanderthal genes. OK, so that explains the tea party. But what about all the people who plan to vote Republican this fall? Every law Republicans have passed has hurt the middle class and poor. Surely history has demonstrated that Republicans only care about the richest 2 percent of the population. So why would anybody outside that 2 percent vote Republican?

Geneticists have found the answer to that, too. In about 30 percent of all humans there is a genetic mutation that shortchanges the brain of dopamine receptors. Dopamine receptors facilitate thoughts and emotions. The lack of dopamine receptors prevents humans from learning from their mistakes. For a high schoolboy it may be constantly being fired from jobs for showing up late for work. For a college girl it may be continually dating the same kind of loser. For adults it means voting Republican no matter how many times they get screwed by that party. The lesson never sinks in.

So I have found the answer to why so many people vote Republican. Hopefully science will advance so that someday gene therapy will provide a cure.

John Morgan

Arlington Heights