Why the extreme hatred toward Obama?

Conservatives are REALLY ANGRY at Obama. The vitriol has been profound since summer. But what exactly has Obama done that has driven all of this anger? Most of what we hear is completely generalized anger of how un-American he is (e.g., he's a socialist), without any specific policy complaints. The lack of specificity by the critics, but especially in the media's reporting of it, has really been bothering me. Conservatives seem angrier than liberals ever did at Bush and he lied us into a war, ignored warnings that terrorists wanted to fly airplanes into US buildings, allowed Enron and Banks to rip us off, cut taxes for those making record profits, etc. What has Obama done that is as bad or worse than that?!? Here is my attempt to understand specifically what has conservatives so upset about the Obama Administration.

Taxes
You have to start with the tea parties, which has been the center of conservative anger. And the tea parties must be about taxes, right? After all, their namesake, the Boston tea party, was about taxation without representation. But Obama has CUT taxes for 95% of Americans and kept them the same (so far) for the remaining 5%. Since the tea baggers weren't protesting Bush's tax rates, then we know taxation can't be the source of the anger. Right? Unfortunately, it probably is for some. A recent poll showed that 24% of American's believed that Obama has raised their taxes. Only 12% believed that Obama had lowered their taxes.

National Debt/Deficit
This is one of the few specifics that I actually ever hear about. But this is an outrageous and hypocritical criticism coming from conservatives, who support the party of national debt. Over the last 60 years, the presidents that have primarily driven up the national debt have been Reagan (especially Reagan!), Bush, and Bush Jr. I don't hear them bashing the Reagan presidency for his debt. Don't believe me on this? Go to Google Images and search "national debt" to see numerous graphs of the national dept(see example above). These three presidents are the only ones since WWII that have had an increase in the national dept as a % of GNP. The national debt is such a mainstay of conservative policy that Dick Cheney stated that "Reagan taught us deficits don't matter."

Bailout
The bailout is another criticism I've heard of Obama. For the most part, this is a ridiculous criticism since the bailout was passed under the Bush Administration. As a senator running for president at the time, Obama supported it, but so did McCain and Palin. So it's clearly not fair to lay this at his feet. I would agree that he should have forced some reversals of Bush policies in how it was administered. However, I think he's addressing much of that by proposing taxes on the big banks that got us into the financial crisis and then begged for the bailout. Of course, conservatives will likely oppose these taxes when it comes time, therefore removing any sliver of legitimacy them may have to criticize Obama on this issue.

Stimulus
Obama passed the stimulus and conservatives have effectively confused the stimulus with the bank bailout (which passed under Bush). The stimulus was a bill to put American's back to work and virtually every economist agrees that it has helped, though there is obviously debate as to how much. Given the talk of one year ago, that we were heading into a potential depression, it seems obvious to me that it has helped immensely, but no one can name exactly how many jobs have been added. There's no question that it's a lot though. Conservatives have purposely confused the stimulus with the bailout, because few people like the idea of throwing money at bankers (which is what Bush did), but most people like the idea of throwing money out there to create jobs in a time of growing job losses (what Obama did). Do conservatives hate Obama for the stimulus? Probably, but they'll never tell you that without talking about the bailout at the same time.

So what is it that has conservatives so angry? I've not addressed the socialist label, mostly because I want to hit that head-on in a future blog. But obviously Obama isn't trying to convert our economic and governmental system into socialism. My shoes, shirt, pizza, television, computer, milk, paper, car, camera, music, movies, etc. are all made by private companies and no American politician has even hinted at questioning that. Of course there was, at one point, a public option in the health care bill. But most Americans supported that (at least initially when 77% of American's said they wanted health care reform) and it has now been abandoned anyway.

So why the extreme hatred? Well, it obviously has a lot more to do with lack of control than with specific policies. If it were about policy, I think we'd hear more specifics and less angry cries of socialism (or Nazism). Of course, there may be worse motivations behind the hatred and while I hate to go there, I'm not sure how you can ignore it given the level of hatred that really is directed at little more than his character.