Every election has had it's lunatic fringe that espoused outrprageous conspiracy theories that either bordered on or crossed the line of insanity. Whether it was the John Birchers with their "everyone is a communist" ideology or 9/11 truthers who believed that President Bush had somehow masterminded the coordinated terrorist attacks on our nation, conspiracies have haunted both sides of the political spectrum. Luckily, saner heads have always prevailed and the voices of paranoia have always been overruled by the majority of reality based individuals in both political parties.

That is until the 2012 presidential election. It appears that the paranoia that first reared it's collective head after the terrorist attack on 9/11 and festered it's way as an undertone through the 2004 elections, and became a force to be reckoned with in 2008 and 2010, has finally taken over the republican party as the predominant thought process. It is almost as if those who are following republican ideology in 2012 are all buying into, or at least tacitly agreeing with, the conspiracy theories that are heard on a daily basis in the right wing blogosphere and on the republican campaign trail. It would be easy to dismiss one or even two of these nuggets of outrage, but we keep hearing the repitition of outlandish theory after outlandish theory, not only from the outliers, but from mainstream republicans themselves. I'm going to demonstrate this mass paranoia with a discussion of six of the republican's most popular conspiracy theories.  President Obama is a Muslim. President Obama is not a United States Citizen. The political polls are all rigged. The president and his henchmen have forced the department of labor statistics to cook the employment books. President Obama is a socialist dedicated to the overthrow of the United States. President Obama is going to confiscate all privately owned guns.

1. President Obama is a Muslim: This is the conspiracy theory that became popular after the President Obama is a Black Liberation Theologist which was the popular conspiracy theory during the 2008 election cycle when it was made public that the President attended the church pastored by Reverend Wright. The fact that the church was a Christian church and the Obama's continue to attend a Christian church as the first family does not appear to defuse the conspiratorial mind. There have been polls that have shown 25 to 50% of republicans subscribe to this totally debunked meme.
2. President Obama is not a United States Citizen: This is the so called birther conspiracy. There has been a rather stubborn segment of the republican party who have been unwilling to accept the fact that President Obama was born in Hawaii and is an American citizen, despite a wealth of evidence that confirms his history, including a birth certificate and newspaper announcements. While most Americans scoff at birtherism, both significant portions of the republican electorate and republican elected officials  have made a public display of this conspiracy theory almost non-stop for the past five years.
3. The political polls are all rigged. With polling data by almost every polling agency giving President Obama a lead throughout the current presidential campaign, the newest republican conspiracy meme is that the presidential preference polls are rigged or skewed to always find in favor of the democratic candidate. This conspiracy might have tilted into the realm of the possible if not for the fact that even polls that were commissioned by republicans to republican leaning polling companies were still finding President Obama ahead in the poll, often by greater margins than the so called democratic polls. The republican conspiracists have come up with a new number, what they are calling the unskewed poll which, magically, shows the republican ahead in all manifestations. It seems that conspiracists can be satiated by their own facts.
4. The president and his henchmen have forced the Department of Labor Statistics to cook the employment books: While most people understand that when it comes to unemployment numbers, what is good for America is not good for republican presidential politics, most Americans do hope that we are coming out of the currrent recession. To look at the unemployment numbers and immediately offer up a conspiracy theory as to why the numbers were better was not a positive thing to do. The numbers are what they are and have been trending in that direction for many months. When individuals who understand statistics look at the labor market adjustments for the summer months, the drop in unemployment is clear. But sometimes the numbers are a sure sign that they are against you.
5. President Obama is a socialist dedicated to the overthrow of the United States: This, of course, has been one of the most popular and one of the most outrageous bits of paranoia being spouted by the far right that has bubbled over into the republican mainstream. To disprove the obvious would only take a quick peek at the rebound in the value of individual investor's portfolios and the doubling of the stock market since the president took office. Private businesses have thrived and small businesses have received multiple tax breaks. Not exactly the mark of socialism.
6. President Obama is going to confiscate all privately held guns:  This goes beyond paranoia into the realm of pure fantasy. President Obama has not placed a single new regulation on gun ownership in this country.This piece of paranoia has frequently been paired with the meme that there are secret labor camps being developed so that the president can imprison his enemies without the rest of the nation knowing. These conspiracies sound like something that would be found in some post-apocolyptical novel. In fact his policies have been such, that the political left in this country feels that this is one of the areas that President Obama has been a disappointment in .

 I cannot remember a time when these types of paranoid rantings have become part of the rhetoric of a political party. Many republicans don't agree with all of them and some republicans believe in none of them. But there is a reality that some republicans believe in all of them and some believe in at least a few of these bits of nonsense.

What that does is preclude a discussion of politics on the issues. When fear and paranoia are the driving forces of your campaign and you are hearing talk radio and your party leaders mouthing these insanities, there is no reason to talk about the merits of policy. The campaign becomes a crusade against a person {in this case Obama} rather than an election for a set of ideas that the voters are supporting. Hate and fear win. Paranoia reigns supreme.

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