Why do Republicans believe so much stuff that is simply not true? (from Quora.com)

Interesting historical tidbit found on Quora...

(Comment posted by Henry Morgan, in response to topic posted by Brian Hands)

Q: Why do Republicans believe so much stuff that is simply not true? What is their problem with reality?

A: Stay with me on this for a second….

In 1976 Republicans lost a Presidential election with an incumbent candidate to an unknown peanut farmer. This rocked them to the core.

After the election they used a new methodology (focus group studies) to try to figure out how to win elections in the future. Their efforts identified one narrow path to victory for Republicans in national elections. They had to divide the country along the lines of religion and race to win. Ronald Reagan used this to great effect in 1980. In making this change Republicans switched their base from fiscal conservatives to religious conservatives. This fundamentally changed the nature of the Republican Party.

Previously Republicans were a pragmatic group of people looking for workable solutions to the problems of the country. Here is what Barry Goldwater had to say about this change.

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.”

This switch turned the Republicans Party from a group of political pragmatists to a faith community. In short order the most important issues to Republicans were group loyalty and shared belief.

The problem you have when a group is centered on it’s beliefs as opposed to it’s goals is that if any of the beliefs do not line up with the facts, it is going to be very hard to change them. This goes double if these beliefs are wrapped up in their religion such that they believe that they came from God.

The solution to this for Republicans was “alternative facts.” Their beliefs were the most important thing to them. The facts are less so. They were much more willing to create facts that align with their beliefs and then believe those facts than change their beliefs.

This is cowardice and if it continues will create ever worse disasters for the U.S. Policy has to align with the facts. Beliefs are not terribly important in politics. The facts and policies that align with those facts need to be the focus.

Almost every question that I read about political positions these days uses the word belief. In the 1970s, that would not have been the case. The religious right has completely changed the way people in the U.S. talk about such things. That signals a corresponding change in thinking as well. If we do not get our heads out of our third point of contact on this, we will lose the country. The Trump cult is just an extension of this. Con men make a profession out of manipulating people through their feelings and beliefs. This has become so easy with Americans that half the country is under the spell of an imbecile.

Back in the 70s, I would never have thought that we could fall so low as a nation.

Debt Ceiling Demystified

 The purpose of the debt ceiling was never supposed to be to limit growth of the debt. As I understand it, the purpose was to eliminate an enormous time-wasting problem Congress was saddled with. The term was merely accountants' jargon, and was never expected to interest the general public.

Every year, Congress has to spend a bunch on money by passing an annual budget, and to raise revenue to pay for the budget by passing an annual tax code. All too often, the tax code would not bring in enough revenue to pay for the entire budget, resulting in a shortfall of revenue, after which Congress had to vote separately to approve each and every routine line-item expenditure that remained after the revenue ran out. The debt ceiling, which arguably was given a name that has aged poorly, was created as a routine administrative procedure to combine all those remaining line-item expenditures into a single package that could be approved with a single routine vote. It's basically just a software patch to fix a glitch in the synchronization between the budget and the tax code.