Action against The Enemy replaces any action to directly address economic and social marginalization.
It's how we process information. Avoiding this cognitive glitch takes practice.
This is where the racism comes in. As long as you believe that the social safety net cuts are disproportionally hurting the "other" more than you, you have plenty of space for the cognitive dissonance required to support the cuts even when they are negatively impacting your own situation.
Combine this with the fact that the right has two tiers, one of them made up of wealthy asset owners who politically push for the changes (and benefit from them in the form of extremely low taxes) and the second made up of working class people who can be convinced the changes are good as long it allows them to think those they see as below them will suffer more than they will.
Get yourself a nice feedback loop going in the form of hurting the poor, convincing them the source of their oppression is the "other" to get them to support even more austerity, repeat and you can explain a lot about the politics of much of rural America.
Isn’t it the case anyway that if you add state, federal, local, property, capital gains, and sales taxes, add the money that you and your employer pays for healthcare, that you’re basically paying slightly more in taxes all-in?