It is one thing to have two parties with opposing opinions, but increasingly we face not a choice between different opinions but a choice between reality based views versus viewed based upon delusions. Some conservatives continue to believe that Iraq had WMD at the onset of the war or that Saddam was working with al Qaeda. Some conservatives believe the pseudo-science on creationism from the Discovery Institute along with the similarly bogus science of global warming deniers. The health care debate is increasingly being argued over fallacious claims of the right as to what is even being proposed. Perhaps the most absurd claims from the right, which even many conservatives are distancing themselves from, regard the conspiracy theories over Barack Obama’s citizenship.
Many Republicans are accepting the Birther conspiracy theories. For example a new poll shows that only 32 percent of Virginia Republicans believe Obama is a citizen. This leaves Republicans open to falling for hoaxes, such as a fake Kenyan birth certificate which has been spread around the internet the last couple of days. While right wing sources such as WorldNet Daily and many bloggers took the latest forgery seriously, even Karl Rove thought it was a forgery. The forgery has as many holes in it as there are in the right wing claims that health reform means a government take over of health care or the pseudo-science of the Discovery Institute. This again shows that the fundamental problem with the current conservative movement is not merely that the values of so many of they are warped or that they are incompetent when in government, but that so many of them are living in an alternative reality.