I've thought and read about this a lot. Here's what I've come up with: A group will step on those they perceive as being below them. By providing poor whites with the illusion they're better than brown people, the GOP is able to make them also care about issues that will never affect them.

It came into focus for me one time when my father in law began complaining about Democrats trying to increase the estate tax. I was like, "What are you talking about??? This will never affect either of us."

There's also the "millionaires in exile" fantasy a lot of people who believe in nonsense like prosperity gospel have. They don't care about poor people issues because they've been convinced that god will shower them with riches at any time. They need to prepare for this by making sure the government won't take all their money. 🙄