The Perpetual Conservative Hissyfit: “If Liberals Are For It, I’m Against It!”

I’ve lived in the South all of my life, as some of you who follow my page already know. Over the last few decades, I’ve resided in Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and now Louisiana.

Apart from the couple of years where I lived in the relatively liberal city of Orlando, the rest of that time has been spent in the reddest of red districts. Needless to say, after having been raised as an extremely religious conservative Republican and after all of these years here in the Bible Belt, it’s safe to say I’m quite familiar with the right-wing mindset that is now becoming more and more mainstream in the GOP.

During that time and through my constant, daily contact with conservatives in real life, I’ve found that many of them are relying on what seems to be an ideology of cutting off their nose to spite their face. Yeah, I know this is old news to a lot of you, but let me explain further.

Way back in 1932, the famous comedian Groucho Marx appeared in a movie called “Horse Feathers.” In this film his character, Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, has a scene called “I’m Against It,” which perfectly encapsulates the current mentality of many self-described conservatives these days. You can watch the video clip here.

Just like Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, the average Republican voter seems to be suffering from a serious case of “I’m Against It,” solely because President Obama proposed it or because they’ve been told that the idea is part of a liberal plot to destroy America – even if the idea is something that goes along with conservative principles.

Don’t believe me? Just look at the conservative rallying cry of “states’ rights” that they bring up every time the President signs something they don’t like or the Supreme Court issues a ruling that sets them off on temper tantrums that I usually only see from little kids after they’ve been told to turn off the TV and go to bed. Republicans responded with bitter outrage when the Affordable Care Act was passed and then seemed to have a collective coronary when the Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate portion of it which remains their greatest gripe with the law, despite the fact that the individual mandate was a proposal from the Heritage Foundation back in the 1990s in response to “HillaryCare.”

Want another example? How about the fact that Nebraska and Oklahoma are suing Colorado over legal marijuana? Where’s all the states’ rights champions on the right coming to the defense of Colorado and their decision to stop throwing people in jail over a damn plant and make tax dollars off it instead? Or how about all of the “traditional marriage” advocates who are beside themselves that states have decided that adults can make civil contracts with each other, regardless of whether they have opposite reproductive organs or not?