Mostly because they believe and have been encouraged to believe that any protections/benefits would go to people who "don't deserve it" (also known as: whicheve

Mostly because they believe and have been encouraged to believe that any protections/benefits would go to people who "don't deserve it" (also known as: whichever racial/ethnic demographic those voters have been raised to hate the most). They're very much in favor of discriminatory special-treatment programs that help them and only them, but very much against broad safety nets because they've been told such programs would only benefit the bad other people.