The GOP's Alternate Reality

at Politico, via nc links:

If you listened only to conservatives, you would think that the health care law was some sort of fascist takeover — though the leading GOP presidential candidate implemented a nearly identical system in Massachusetts. Many features of the plan were hatched by the conservative Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s, and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) put forward a plan approved by the House Republicans to turn Medicare into a system similar to Obamacare. Somehow, for Republicans, the private sector can do no wrong. When it does wrong, it’s not the private sector that did it.

This level of core duplicity goes back to the founding of the modern conservative movement — the New Right and the neoconservatives in the 1970s. Many of these influential neocons were ex-Trotskyites, schooled in the political organizing tactics that included deception and propaganda as basic tools for political control. It has proved a fabulously successful political strategy: The political spectrum has moved far to the right in both parties — with the significant exception of gay rights.

What is striking today about Republican control of Congress is how reality is just not relevant to governing.

It also brings up blaming the entire financial crisis on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  I think the idea that tax cuts create jobs and increase revenues should also be mentioned.  We have gotten to the point where the "wingnut Wurlitzer," as the folks at Balloon Juice refer to it, has been so effective in repeating the same untrue talking points that many people can't be convinced with clear data that their dearly held beliefs have no root in actual fact.  Try to correct a conservative friend's chain email by sending them a debunking by Snopes.com.  They will likely tell you that Snopes is liberal.  They've gotten an email telling them this is true.  I never was able to convince Grandpa that Target isn't a French-owned company, even after I told him it used to be Dayton-Hudson Corporation, and has never been purchased by another company.