Freepers and false assumptions...

[kentuck]

Most Republicans truly believe that the economy should be much stronger right now and the reason it is not stronger is because of the policies of Barack Hussein Obama.

They assume the last recession, when Bush left office, was no different from any other recession. They assume we should be in full recovery.

Either they do not believe the economy was as bad as everyone else in the world thought it was in 2009 or they have conveniently forgotten? The capitalist system was not about to collapse. The banks should have been permitted to go under. We would have a flourishing economy if we had permitted the market to work. We would be in much better shape today if we had not saved the auto industry from going under. The unemployment rate would not be as high as it is now under Barack Obama if we had not spent so much money on these bailouts. I do not doubt but that they truly believe this.

Either they have forgotten that we were losing 750,000 jobs per month when Barack Obama took office or they simply believe that Republicans would have instantly taken that number to zero? They assume the recession was no big deal. There was no reason to believe it was any worse than any other recession. If only the people had kept them in charge, our country would be in a much better condition today.

I do not question their sincerity. I question their sanity.

.

[rustydog]

1. Most Republican voters will only quote you talking points

they cannot form their own opinions in their own words..they read Rush Limbaugh's lips and go from there...it is sad.

[Arkansas Granny]

3. That's true. It's much easier to let someone else tell you what your opinion should be than it

is to really study a problem and arrive at your own conclusions. I believe that's why Fox News is so popular with the RWers. They don't have to think about the issues, just repeat the talking points that are drilled into them.

[TrogL]

2. Most Republicans (or any authoritarians for that matter) don't have a good grasp on causality

They also don't think good.

We've got the same problem up here. We just had elections in Alberta. If you talk tleft-wing Party supporters about the rationale behind the Party platform, they'll talk your damn ear off 'til you're begging them to stop. If you talk to the right wing Party, they'll quote the talking points then stop. Drill down into the talking point and you'll hit a blank wall. They either don't understand it or they simply don't have the tools to rationally discuss it.

There was an embarassing moment on TV last night. The leader of the right-wing Wild Rose party was approached by a reporter asking about a tweet. She blew up at him saying that she would not discuss any issue that had not be submitted in advance.

[saras]

4. "I question their sanity." Yep. Economic denial is just like climate denial or fascism denial

[democrat_patriot]

5. They believe broad 'ideas', but not specifics.

For example:

"Obama has done more to destroy this country then any other president" - I hear this quite a bit.

But when prompted for examples; crickets. Or they say "Obamacare".

Ok, but what about Obamacare is so horrible? A. Blank look or B. "Mandates"

But what about mandates are so horrible? A. Blank look B. "It's a government takeover"

How is it a Government takeover? etc. etc. etc.

Eventually they get angry, knowing that their belief system is corrupt. But they cling to it anyway.

[Versailles]

6. Study that is relevant to the question at hand.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/07/conservative-politics-low-effort-thinking_n_1410448.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

...a study published in the journal "Psychological Science" showed that children who score low on intelligence tests gravitate toward socially conservative political views in adulthood--perhaps because conservative ideologies stress "structure and order" that make it easier to understand a complicated world.

*snip*

"Our research shows that low-effort thought promotes political conservatism, not that political conservatives use low-effort thinking."

Just a thought on the topic...

[kentuck]

7. From my observations...

I think that is probably true. Many of them look at politics in a very simple way. They filter the information they receive without much effort to look into its legitimacy. They tend to vote because they are "patriots" and love their country. They would prefer to talk about other subject matters, like NASCAR, their motor homes, their guns, those Arabs, their church, and how government wastes their money, etc...

[CenaW]

9. And that study is far too complex for the low information voter to understand.

[CenaW]

8. That infamous Republican voter base has no idea how bad the financial disaster was,

because FauxNews and all the radio conservatives told them it was only a little mortgage problem, too many poor people took out mortgages they couldn't pay for, that the government forced the banks to lend to the poor, etc.
They are warned away from any of the major propaganda news orgs, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, PBS, NPR by being told they are all just liberal outlets, hilarious when there are no national news organizations doing anything but promoting conservative corporate propaganda.

[HughBeaumont]

10. They also forget that this was Bewsh's second recession.

The economy was already fragile prior TO The Great Recession. The only good times of hiring during The Bewsh Failbomb was the very beginning of his term (due to Clinton policies, which he soon got rid of) and during 2004-2005 (his re-selection).

2001-2008 = VOID where exhibited, as far as Republicans go. RMoney is now calling him "Obama's predecessor". Clever, Luntz . . . clever.

[kentuck]

11. They believe his taxcuts kept us from a more serious recession ...

...after the tech bubble burst. However, the unemployment rate was just above 4% when Bush took office and there was a surplus for as far as the eye could see, even with the tech bubble bursting. It did not have a huge impact on our economy. Even 9/11 events "only" contributed about $200 billion in losses to our economy. It was the Bush and the Republican policies that almost destroyed our nation. We are still not out of the woods. We may never get out of the woods. One thing for sure, if we go back to the Bush policies, we will be lost in the woods.

[HughBeaumont]

12. And they'd believe wrong.

Right after he enacted those tax cuts in 2001, companies went on fire-a-thons. Then they used 9-11 as an excuse to continue the fire-a-thons. I was one of them, unfortunately.

You don't give wealthy people or corporations free money. They'll do nothing with it but add to their wealth and that's about it. Wealthy motherfuckers for the most part are NOT benevolent if they're not obligated. Even some of the turn-of-the-century Robber Barons left public legacies in their wake. With the Larry Ellisons and Bernie Marcuses of the world . . . PFFFFFT, 13 mansions! One even has a kewl pool trolley!

[belcffub]

14. the beginning was not so bright either

Dot Com bubble crash in the first couple of months... that really started in the late 90's as more and more dot coms were going under... then you had , enron adelphia, etc... which were 90's era corruptions that came light around the same time...

working in tech I do not remember the 99-2001 time period being very smooth...

[KharmaTrain]

13. Part Of The Plan...

The booosh regime ran a scortched earth policy regarding the economy. By the disastrous second "term", the pillage of the treasury had turned a surplus into massive defecits and then boooooosh made sure the rest of the economy was ransacked for every last corporate profit. That's who elected him and he delivered...just like Mittens plans to do.

Obama or whomever followed boooosh was destined to have to clean up the messes 8 years of that corrupt and inept regime brought upon the country...a depression (recession my ass...the economy collapsed!), two wars for profit that took President Obama the better part of the past 4 years to start to wind down and the total poisoning of political discourse (exagerated by the forming of the teabaggers). President Obama's spent most of his term cleaning up the messes...and with the rushpublicans being obstructionist all the way along.

Sanity is not a problem with rushpublicans...they are too blinded by their greed and arrogance to even approach a sane political policy and the only way for them to regain power to pillage again is to do all they can to pull down the country and make this President look bad. Thanks to the corporate media they've made great progress in that effort...