A Full Spectrum of OIP Derangement Symptoms

This week the Republican leadership displayed the full spectrum of symptoms of OIP Derangement Syndrome.

1) Blaming President Barack Obama for things he can’t be responsible for. On Monday, House Speaker John Boehner’s office issued a statement responding to disagreements over the farm bill by stating:

The president continues to blame anyone and everyone for the drought but himself.

On most days it would be obvious that the President is not responsible for the weather—so obvious that no one would write or approve a public statement suggesting that he is. But when your psyche wants to blame Barack Obama for everything, that sort of sentence slips through. It took hours of ridicule before Boehner’s office revised his words.

2) Double standards. Buzzfeed reported:

Mitt Romney often attacks President Obama for his lack of business experience, but his own running mate has spent his life in government as a Congressional staffer and Congressman since graduating college. At a May event in Las Vegas, Romney enthusiastically told the story of man who proposed amending the Constitution to require all presidents have three years of business experience, a criteria that would disqualify his own running mate.

Obama worked for a year after college at Business International Corporation, and later was an associate of the Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland law firm. Ryan’s only post-collegiate stretch not on a government or political payroll was a brief period as a “marketing consultant” for his own family’s construction firm in 1997 while he prepared to run for Congress.

3) Demeaning language. Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) told a gathering about Tea Party sentiment:

“I think it’s going to overtake the political class. I think it’s going to respectfully pick this president up and pat him on the head and say, son, son, son, Mr. President, you were never ready to be president, now go home and work for somebody and find out how the real world works.”

Calling a man in his fifties “son”? Saying he has to “work for somebody”? Walsh’s racism is showing.

4) False statements about President Obama. As the Boston Globe reported, the Mitt Romney campaign has run three ads about welfare policy that lie about the Obama administration’s policy, gloss over Romney’s requests as governor, and edit video of Obama to omit statements that contradict those ads’ claims. The paper reminds us, “Romney’s first welfare ad received a ‘pants on fire’ rating from PolitiFact and ‘four ­Pinocchios’ from the Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog.” As with Walsh’s statement, there’s a malodorous undertone in how much Republicans like Romney and Newt Gingrich harp on welfare when speaking of President Obama.