Everything Republicans Have Said About President Obama Has Been Absolutely Wrong

by Allen Clifton

I’ve often joked that I would like to live inside the mind of a wingnut for a day just to see what the world is like from the perspective of someone who doesn’t live in reality. The sad truth is wingnuts are impervious to the facts when dealing with all sorts of topics.
This is how debating facts with wingnuts generally goes. If the fact is indisputable (low gas prices, Osama bin Ladin’s death, stock levels, job creation) it’s never because of something President Obama did or didn’t do. And in the case of gas prices, they would be right. Presidents have little or no control over the price of oil or gas. Though that’s not the message you’ll see wingnuts regurgitating whenever gas prices rise. According to Republicans, only when they’re high do they have anything to do with the president.
And if some facts happen to leave the debate open for some individuals to skew the data how they’d like (unemployment rate, effectiveness of the Affordable Care Act), then it’s typically some wild conspiracy theory based on absolutely no factual information. These “facts” are essentially nothing more than right-wing propaganda passed off as “facts” by the wingnut media.
That’s how conspiracy theorists work. If there’s information that indisputably debunks their conspiracy, then that information is obviously “part of the coverup.” It’s why you can never really “win” with these people. If you prove them wrong, whatever you’re using to shred their nonsense is “part of the lie.” And if the data you present can be twisted in another way – then they’ll twist it to suit their narrative.
But when it comes to wingnuts and all the absurd lies they’ve told about President Obama, it’s astonishing how so many of them haven’t come true. And now matter how many of these lies get disproven, rarely do you see wingnuts sit there and say to themselves, “Wow, so pretty much everything Fox News and the Republican party told me would happen, hasn’t happened. Perhaps they’ve been lying to me the whole time.”
Then again, that would require someone to have the ability to think for themselves, which isn’t a trait valued by many wingnut voters.
When I think of the lies Republicans have pushed about President Obama, and how many of them didn’t even come close to happening, it’s astonishing that anyone still believes these serial liars.
After all, where are those death panels? This lie wouldn’t be that big of a deal if it was just something pushed on wingnut blogs and conspiracy sites. But this was something brought up by members of Congress and often pushed by pundits on Fox News. Hell, there are still quite a few wingnuts out there right now who honestly believe that “Obamacare” contains death panels.
Speaking of “Obamacare,” remember when it was going to “destroy job creation”? Hell, we just saw the best year for job creation since Bill Clinton was president with no signs of job creation slowing down. Our unemployment rate is below 6 percent for the first time in years and we’re currently in the middle of the longest uninterrupted streak of private sector job growth in our country’s history.
You really couldn’t come up with better irony than that. The first year where the Affordable Care Act was really enacted we saw the best year for job growth since the Clinton era – despite the fact that for six years Republicans have been telling the American people what a “job killer” the health care law is.
And I know most of us remember the constant fear-mongering about how Obama’s policies would “cause gas prices to skyrocket.” I remember this kind of rhetoric vividly from the 2012 presidential election. It’s also a narrative that’s almost always pushed by wingnuts the moment gas prices inch even slightly higher than most Americans are comfortable with. I remember Newt Gingrich saying if he were elected president he would give Americans $2.50 per gallon gas. Well, under President Obama, many states are seeing gas prices below $2. Though it’s unlikely you’ll be seeing the president praised for these low gas prices anytime soon on Fox News.
Then there’s the always popular “Obama is a socialist” based on, well… nothing. There’s absolutely no evidence that the president is a socialist.
Or that he’s a Muslim.
Then, sadly, there are still millions of wingnuts who don’t even believe he’s an American citizen. Yet another lie that’s been debunked numerous times and is completely absurd on several levels.
And I’m still waiting for this massive gun confiscation wingnuts have been promising the American people he was going to implement. Though I’m sure when he’s out of office, and nobody’s guns have been confiscated, then they’ll say, “See, we fought Obama’s attempt to walk all over the Second Amendment and won!” Meanwhile, wingnuts never seem to put two and two together to realize that this fear-mongering by the NRA and the Republicans, despite the fact that there’s no evidence to support it, almost always leads to record gun and ammo sales.
The biggest “lie” Republicans have on President Obama is when he told Americans they would be able to keep their health insurance plan under the Affordable Care Act. And for the overwhelming number of Americans with health care that statement was correct. But for around 5 million it wasn’t, and there’s no denying Obama was wrong. But even at the core of that “lie,” it’s based upon the fact that most of these plans that were cancelled were plans Americans were paying for that weren’t really providing comprehensive health coverage. Most of those plans just offered the illusion of having health insurance instead of actually having it.
Then remember when Fox News, and many Republicans, pushed the idea that President Obama and the CDC were lying to the American people about Ebola when they said an outbreak was almost next to impossible and the disease was extremely difficult to spread? Remind me again, who turned out to be right about that – the president, medical experts and the CDC, or Fox News?
It’s just laughable to me how often these lies Republicans have pushed against the president have been soundly debunked and defeated, yet it never seems to deter wingnut voters when it comes to believing the nonsense pushed by the Republicans and the wingnut media.
Then again, facts and reality are two things many wingnuts rarely care much about.