Republicans deluded themselves in 2012

It wasn't cocky confidence, or braggadocio or even hubris. It wasn't just Dick Morris. Or Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh. It wasn't only the Khronically Konservative Kommenters predicting a landslide for Mitt Romney, or even the douchey right-wing blogs.

It wasn't Karl Rove by himself, even though he wanted to recreate Election 2000 by forcing Fox to walk back its call of Ohio for Obama, a little after 10 p.m. Tuesday night -- stalling Romney's concession for a couple of hours -- as he remained convinced that "tha math" had the Republican in the White House when reality did not.

It was also Romney himself and his running mate Paul Ryan, their campaign staff, and most curiously of all, their pollsters. They were all convinced they were going to win -- and by as large a margin as they lost.

Romney advisers are telling CBS News that there wasn't one person on the Romney campaign who saw the loss coming, and the GOP presidential candidate was "shellshocked" by the results. Here's what they have to say:

• "We went into the evening confident we had a good path to victory... I don't think there was one person who saw this coming." 

• "There's nothing worse than when you think you're going to win, and you don't... It was like a sucker punch." 

• Romney "was shellshocked." 

The CBS story indicates that the Romney team even bought into the "unskewed polls" theory, believing that the polls dramatically underestimated Republican turnout and overestimated Democratic enthusiasm.

This report comes after other indications that the Romney campaign was disregarding polling data. On election night, the Romney campaign told the press it didn't have a concession speech prepared. Karl Rove went against Fox News and questioned whether Ohio was going to Obama, contradicting overwhelming electoral analysis. And Wednesday, Romney's website briefly displayed a page indicating he had won the presidency before it was taken down. 

Well, that explains why they were campaigning in Pennsylvania on the day before Election Day, anyway.

This is much worse than Fox or Townhall.com or Newsmax or Michelle Malkin telling people Romney was going to win. When even the Republican nominee and their campaign believed the lies... well, this is mental illness territory, folks.

Republicans down to the last man and woman are suffering a self-inflicted information disadvantage, and while I will shed not even a crocodile tear over what it means for the GOP, the truth is (another pesky fact) that their delusional behavior is harming the nation.

And not just because it reveals the entire conservative "logic" trail: that if truth is inconvenient, invent your own. It explains why climate change isn't occurring -- or isn't influenced by our energy policies. It provides a rationale for rape being God's gift to women and that massive voter fraud is happening and tax cuts create jobs and pretty much everything else they believe to be true, which isn't.

Whose stock responses to things that are true that they don't like include "I don't believe it; it must be the liberal media". "These damned liberals are all brainwashed in college and just want free stuff".

How do you work together with a group of people who supply their own fallacies as arguments? Who refuse to accept science, reason and logic? Who become irritated, outraged, aggressively hostile when presented with clinical factual data?

Lithium? Haldol? Thorazine?

I'm completely serious.

We're about to have another one of those discussions about how much taxes are going to be and will government spend it on guns or butter. And the Republicans are already digging in their heels.

And because conservatives are continuing to act so irrationally, is the president going to have to compromise because they won't (sign of weakness and all). Is Obama going to have to agree once more to cuts in Medicare and Social Security in order to wrangle a tax increase out of John Boehner?

Shouldn't mentally challenged people -- particularly people contriving their own mental challenges -- be on their meds before they resume normal activities of daily living?

That's all I'm asking. And I'm not kidding.

Update: Booman with the "stupid or evil" question. He says 'both'. (See? I'm much nicer than him.) And Politico explains the epic fail of the ORCA vote-tracking project.

Update II: Thanks for all the feedback, everyone. David Frum: "Republicans have been fleeced, exploited, and lied to by a conservative entertainment complex"...



Brutally candid assessment, and from a Republican yet. Still, this might be too factual for conservatives to understand.

"Because the followers, the donors and the activists are so mistaken about the nature of the problems the country faces...just a simple question, and I went to Tea Party rallies and asked this question, have taxes gone up or down in recent years? They can't answer this question."