There are two factors that make Republicans white hot with rage over "Obamacare" ...

1. The "Obama" part, of course.
2. It's a government program that helps people in need.

#1 is simple, as we've discussed on hundreds of DU threads since January 2009. Right-wingers think Obama is the Anti-Christ.

#2 is the other key, I think. Their orthodoxy tells them that nothing the government does can possibly be any good, except intrusions into private morality and the military. But it's more than that. I really believe a lot of them have this Randian/Libertarian view that if you're in need, it's your own fault. And any help you get should come from your church. (What? You don't have one?? Then just die.)

Many on the Right apparently take satisfaction in punishment of the "indolent" by means of the free market's Invisible Hand. When poor people suffer, when government employees lose their pensions, or when the buyers of sub-prime mortgages lose their homes, it's their proof that "the system is working." Of course, many of them don't actively relish this suffering -- more often they're just indifferent to the suffering. If forced to consider the misery, the general reaction is "What do I care? It's not me or my family."

I know you know all this... I'm just scratching my head along with you over their illogic and obliviousness. (And I'm lumping all conservatives into the same mindset, when really there are variations and nuances within the group. But I think this describes the prevailing mindset.)

Sometimes in a paranoid moment, it seems to me that this is just the end game of an elaborate right-wing conspiracy to get the Heritage Foundation's plan in place. But the way it's played out, with all the attempts to stifle "a government takeover of health care," I really think it's more that the RW spinmeisters have manipulated the popular conservative imagination into seeing the ACA as the demonic offspring of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. We hear the law described as the undoing of the Constitution, proof that Obama is a dictator, a victory for Marxism, the triumph of evil in this world, and so on.

In a weird way, I have to just stand back and marvel at the ability of the right-wing brainwashing apparatus to convince their flock that a plan based on an industry-friendly model cooked up by a conservative think tank (and implemented by a Republican governor) is somehow "socialism."

And I predict, that like moon landing-deniers, many of them will never believe the successes of the ACA are for real, no matter how much evidence is presented to them.