Cognitive Dissonance And The Conservative Hatred Of President Obama

Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy and John Boehner. Credit: Getty Images; AP Photo (2)

Whenever gas prices go up, or the stock market goes down, or unemployment claims go up, you can be sure that you’ll hear someone blame President Obama. One of the most commonly used talking points is claiming that the average cost of gasoline was well below $2 a gallon when he took office, but now it’s around $3.60 – so of course, “Obama is trying to destroy the economy!” What they tend to conveniently overlook is the fact that the average price of gasoline was over $4 a gallon just a few months prior, when Bush was in office.

What does any of this have to do with the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Actually, not much. You see, despite whatever you’ll hear from Fox News and their sycophants, the White House doesn’t control the price of gas. They also don’t control the weather, climate change, the media, the traffic on your way to work, the temperature of your coffee from Starbucks, or your neighbor’s dog that won’t stop taking a dump in your yard.

The latest jobs report shows that payrolls rose by another 209,000 and unemployment is down to 6.2%, but you won’t hear anyone in conservative media credit President Obama’s economic policies. In the bubble around “Bullshit Mountain,” everything that goes wrong on Obama’s watch is his fault, but anything positive (like the latest jobs report) is attributed to something else.

Right now, the conservative media would have you believe that the president sits behind some Dr. Evil-like control panel and is plotting the destruction of America – except when he’s on vacation, and even then he’s still scheming up ways to put us all in FEMA camps while golfing the back nine.

He’s also an evil, tyrannical dictator hellbent on destroying America as we know it while imposing shariah law and gay marriage on all of us, but he’s a weak and incompetent executive at the same time. I know this is absolute insanity, and can you just imagine the mental gymnastics and cognitive dissonance these people must deal with in order to believe these things?

The image of President Obama being “anti-American” is often one promoted by those on the right. In truth this is nothing but a surface result of political maneuvering. Those at the head of the conservative ideological block generally know that these ideas are nonsense, however they view them as highly-useful tools for making the media war with “the liberal.” (Source)

Yet, despite bashing the President for taking a few days away from Washington here and there, inside the conservative media bubble, they’ve conveniently overlooked what is probably the least productive Congress in history. These guys couldn’t even pass a resolution congratulating the Pope for being the first pontiff from the Americas - seriously.

There actually are a few (19 out of 221) GOP backers of this resolution and one of them is leaking a little information about why it may never pass or even be voted on. According to this Republican insider, many of his cohorts expressed concern that the Pope has been making statements on issues like “trickle-down economics,” which are “politically charged.” (Source)

You heard that right, they refused to pass what basically amounts to a congratulations card to the most powerful religious leader in the world, out of spite. So maybe, just maybe, they had more important things to do? You know, like the border crisis or highway repairs? Nope.

The people’s representatives were hurrying to depart Thursday for their five-week summer vacation, but first they had some important business to complete. Emergency legislation to ease the crisis at the border? Funding to keep highway repairs going?

Afraid not. House Republicans were instead taking up their not-quite-impeachment legislation: a bill that would authorize the House to sue President Obama for allegedly violating the Constitution, which, by definition, is an impeachable offense. (Source)

The fact of the matter is that despite whatever the issue is, Republicans are determined to do whatever they have to in order to oppose and slander President Obama. It isn’t about helping the country or stopping bad legislation, it’s simply about blocking anything and everything he wants to accomplish, no matter what the cost is or how badly it reflects on them. It does end up being a Catch-22 for a lot of Republicans who cannot vote for anything supported by President Obama because they will then lose in their own primaries to more extreme candidates, as we saw in the surprise defeat of Eric Cantor in Virginia.

At some point, the right-wing conservative hatred of the president will end up destroying the GOP as it drags the party ever further to edge of irrelevancy. The only things keeping it from happening right now are some gerrymandered districts and liberal apathy toward voting, especially in midterm elections. If you want to put an end to the obstruction, you need to vote. We can send a message to the worst Congress in history that we are tired of the lies and spin, but only if we show up at the polls in November. It really is that simple.