The People's Champ Paul Waldman had an interesting post earlier on the conservative disconnect between their perception of Obama and his actual policies, or even the fact that they don't seem to accept that the president was born here. A while ago, Daniel Larison wrote a persuasive piece that I think gets to the reason behind this disconnect:
The impulse to label an opponent as an extremist is a common and tempting one. It is a very easy thing to do, provided that you are not concerned with accuracy or persuading undecided and unaffiliated people that you are right. These labels are not descriptive. They are a way to express the extent of one's discontent and disaffection with the other side in a debate. When some Republican says that Obama and his party have been governing from “the left,” he might even believe it inasmuch as Obama and his party are to his left politically, but what he really means is that he strongly disapproves of how Obama and his party have been governing. He may or may not have a coherent reason for this disapproval, but declaring it to be leftist or radical leftist conveys the depth of his displeasure. That is, it is not analysis of political reality. It is therapy for the person making the statement.
Similarly, it was theraputic for liberals to decry Bush as a lawbreaking fascist for his approach to national security, but now that Obama has embraced the Bush approach from 2006-2008 they're not, for the most part, outraged at all.
I also think this applies not just to the objective evaluation of what policies Obama has or hasn't implemented but also to the conservative obsession with ACORN supposedly stealing elections, something that has never happened, or the bizarre belief that the president wasn't born here. Believing such nonsense is a form of self-defining rebellion against the system, the kind you have when you're a teenager. Apparently few of us ever grow up.
-- A. Serwer
