Can the republicans be made to feel "shame"?? What are people that feel no shame??

Hello Tay. I have one answer to your first question and two answers to your second one. It seems to me that Republican politicians can feel no shame, at least when it comes to politics. Perhaps the political system and the nature of politics especially among conservatives, recruits and nurtures people who are so self-confident and self-righteous, or so pathologically disordered, that they are incapable of experiencing shame.

Regarding the second question, the self-confidence and self-righteousness (which leads to hypocrisy), along with the tight-knit single-minded purposiveness of the Republican Party, leads to something called Grouphink in which people stick with the same plan and feel assured of its virtue despite all evidence to the contrary. My second answer is also embedded in the answer to your first question, which is that these Republicans tend to be narcissistic to a pathological degree, or otherwise some sort of sociopath. The current system seems to recruit and nurture such personalities, tragically. These are exactly the sorts of people which researchers have found experience no sense of shame.

Unfortunately true.  Anti distinguished between sociopaths and psychopaths elsewhere.  The former justify their actions by "the system" or "the way of the world" while the latter just wonder why anyone is complaining.  There are some other factors, such as how ideology convinces us that the way of the world is moral even when everything we sees conflicts with that.  Keeping the narrative intact means spinning the facts inside out and upside down to protect the myths that give you meaning and purpose.  The problem is beyond reason because it is buried in "identity."  It takes an emotional/pscyological crash and something akin to therapy to be "reborn" into reality.

A lot of my liberal friends continue to wonder how people can think or believe what the Right believes.  What they (we) have to grasp is that it is not about education and reason per se.  We live in narratives, liberals too, and issues make sense to us within the narrative, not apart from it.  What matters is to have a "philosophy" instead of an "ideology" so your narrative is open-ended and changes with experience in the real world instead of just interpreting everything in terms of what keeps the story intact.  If you are going WTF! about others, try bending the exclamation into WTF?  It is worth understanding why they do believe what they do, if only to keep from being driven crazy trying to make sense of their "thinking."  Once I treated it as "crazy," it started to make sense as human behavior. 

Their politics have led us to ruin and still they pursue the same stupid, self-serving policies so I'd say that the answer is no, they can't be made to feel shame.  They do have fears though, as in: have you noticed how much they fear the invocation of the name George W Bush?  It seems like their is terror over the prospect of an endorsement by the king of the numbskulls.

Shame?   Don't care for the 99%?    Putting aside the minor FACT that the 1%  PAY  (note, not ignore or evade)  40% of all income taxes collected,  putting aside the minor FACT that the top 2% PAY (not ignore or evade)  55% of all income taxes collected,   I suppose  they really need to listen to your self appointed moralizing psychosilliness,  and think about paying their "fair share?"  How about if they suddenly are overcome with mass "care" and the top 2% pay everything?    Wouldn't that be great? They'd also have no choice but to initiate massive layoffs of all the hard working, middle class, "little people,"     and they'd all be without any income at all to tax starting in year two,  leaving   ALL of that 55% of all income tax revenues collected,  plus the existing 45%,  for the 98% to pay.  Meanwhile,  confiscate ALL of the 1%'s  reamaining wealth and assets,  and it will barely make a small dent in Obama's  colossal spending.

All that aside,   ever see the study by the left leaning social researcher from Buffalo, seeking to formally analyze charitable donation patterns  by the wealthy,  particularly as to  any difference between wealthy liberals and wealthy conservatives?   He stated outright that he assumed liberals, with their assumed monopoly on "social conscience,"  etc.  would be objectively proven to be far more generous with their own private funds than the supposedly greedy, stingy conservatives.  He  was quite surprised to find that REALITY   was  far, far the opposite.  Wealthy conservatives, usually without much fanfare,  gave far, far more to worthwhile private charities, than comparably wealthy  liberal "progressives,"  who were very stingy with their own assets while talking a good game about government give aways.  (always generous with everyone else's tax dollars)

1%   paying  40%?   What a "shame!"

I really get tired of the Whitemoons who try to tell me that people who vote for Dickens' London instead of good public and social services are more generous than rich "liberals."  I don't know how they make the division and decide who is a "liberal," but my point is that those who give to charity instead of having government services have a particular cultish idea of "church" while they hate the idea of democracy.  We also find a lot of "charities" including their Rightwing alternatives instead of sound programs that reflect a genuine social conscience.  For example, how many pray away the gay therapists or no abortion women's pregnancy clinics get charitable deductions that pass the IRS?

We know that a lot of foundations are set up to push their pet projects, contrary to what happens when the general fund supports actual public needs and not what some rich person decides to fund.  For me, if you volunteer at Habitat for Humanity and vote against affordable housing policies, you are not getting the message no matter how much sweat equity or how many nails you drive into a few homes. 

I was particularly taken with "Obama's collosal spending" as if Obama had been able to get the stimulus we need instead of what passed through the GOPimp sphincter.  Because of the GOPimp economy of massive income shifts to the 1%, and the subsequent and totally predictable crash of Bush's lying crapstorm, we need a lot more government spending directed at job creation and putting money into the hands of consumers.  How is the austerity program working in Europe?  They are taking the wrong approach too. 

I appreciate that many people have been told many things about economics by people with badges and 'authority' that are wrong.  I have been around long enough to have my deep doubts about what was being peddled confirmed over and over again.  Supply side does not work, at least this version without any balance.  We are replaying the 'gilded age,' a term of derision instead of admiration.  Greed is not good, not even in part.  Appreciating how money works in an economic system is not the same as how to run a business; but knowing how to create value instead of bubbles is.  Those who try to squeeze the last drop out of the workers and who believe "the art of the deal" is how to succeed in business are short-termers who take the money and run.

Selling one's soul to gain the whole world has never been a smart business decision either.

Go look up "noblesse oblige," pinhead.

As to wealthy liberals vs. wealthy conservatives, that's easy.  There are many more wealthy cons than wealthy liberals, in real numbers.  Wealthy liberals have given proportionately more money, per capita, to progressive politics than wealthy cons have given proportionately, per capital, to con politics, until this era, when the Kochs and others are now buying up our democracy for their corporate and political running dogs.  Liberals typically channel more of their discretionary giveaways into progressive politics, in support of progressive change for all, whereas cons typically channel more of their discretionary giveaways into charities, to get the tax writeoffs. 

Studies have also been written showing that liberals with money give less to charities than cons at times because they feel (and, I believe, rightfully so), that their political and economic agendas are morally superior to those of the cons, so rather than putting their dollars into charities for mere writeoffs, they'll put them instead into attempts to elect progressive politicians who will enact socially just agendas and programs, thus obviating the need for anybody to depend on charity, and on lobbying efforts for same.

Not bad figures, if one considers that the 700,000 or so families (top .0068% or so of the U.S. population)  who control 90%+ of the nation's wealth through stock ownership never spend a hungry or financially stressed day in their parasitic lives, and that most of them never do a lick of real work from cradle to grave.  Or, that most of them manipulate the tax codes so heavily that they pay very few taxes, individually.  Or, that even if their real-dollar taxes are huge, they have so much real wealth that paying their taxes doesn't even put a dent in it. 

Oink, oink.

I think, too, that when the Human Genome Project is finally mapped out and completed, the idea that liberals and cons are genetically determined will be confirmed.  At that point, we'll know which psychological traits are genetically determined, and personalities can be explained through genetics.  Also at that point, we'll find that it's not in cons' genetic makeup, and therefore not in their personalities, for them to be capable of being ashamed.  I think that'll be a reality, but I fear wealthy cons will have seized the process by then, so I'm not sure how much good it'll do the public and the body politic at large.

As genetic engineering progresses, the rich will control it because they'll own the majority of stocks in genetic engineering companies and will fund most of the research and development of genetic engineering, much to the disadvantage and detriment of the rest of the populace.