Why do Right-wingers Hate President Obama?

Despite being sufficiently conservative to annoy no small number of staunch liberals and despite his stances broadly matching many of the most common views of middle America, President Obama has become the right-wing's bogeyman to explain away everything that conflicts with their world view. Actually facing facts would require them to change their world view, and they don't want that. This is how satirist Jon Stewart touched upon so much truth when he reviewed Eastwood's convention speech and noted, 

"But I could never wrap my head around why the world and the President that Republicans describe bear so little resemblance to the world and the President that I experience.  And now I know why. There is a President Obama that only Republicans can see."

The notions of trickle-down have been thoroughly shown to not only fail but fail badly. Upper-bracket tax cuts have been a massive flop. We've had them for over a decade. If they worked to create jobs, we'd be rolling in jobs by now. Deregulation returns the system to a level of instability that's bad for business, lowering the ability to expect what will happen with investments. But facing all of that might -- or even any of that -- might require them to admit that maybe their right-wing approach just isn't right. It might require them to re-think a world view in which they're emotionally invested. So instead, they need someone -- anyone -- to rail against for allegedly embodying all that they fear and want to believe must really be at fault.

Here's how it works in the fantasy land of right-wing escapism to explain why their policies must not actually be the root cause of most of our troubles:

• We've got lingering unemployment? Let's not face that Republican's favorite idea of deregulation was a major factor in creating that; instead, it must be Obama's fault.
• We've got debt? Let's not face that it was mostly accumulated under Republicans and by a wide margin at that; instead, it must be Obama's fault.
• We've got a deficit? Let's not face that spending has grown slower under the current President than under any recent Republican; instead, it must be Obama's fault. Facts and figures be damned; he must be a big spender despite what all those charts show.
• We haven't fully brought our troops home from a war started under a Republican and that has mostly been managed by that Republican administration; it must be Obama's fault.
• Analysts expect the Affordable Care Act that Republicans have opposed to really save money by cutting waste without reducing quality of care while still keeping healthcare a largely private system? Nah, that can't be, they say. Surely, since Republicans have opposed it and it involves those regulations [eek!], Obamacare must be big spending govt socialized medicine. Facts be damned! And fact-checkers along with 'em!

And if one should dare to show solid proof that it was really Republicans at fault for any of these things? Why then according to today's Republicans, they must be a left-winger -- maybe even a leftist -- and their sources must be partisan, no matter how much those sources may have been previously recognized as non-partisan, no matter how much those sources are well documented.