Why is the right wing in such a hate-filled lather over the fact that a 12-year-old boy, Graeme Frost, went on the radio in September and urged President Bush to sign the children's health (SCHIP) bill? As columnist E.J. Dionne asks, "Conservatives claim to be in favor of stable families, small businesses, hard work, private schools, investment and homeownership. So why in the world are so many on the right attacking the family of Graeme Frost?"Great question. Here's an answer (bolding added for emphasis):
...Graeme Frost's family actually proves the conservatives wrong, demonstrating in one crisp clear shining example that even if you do everything the American myth tells you to your family may still need a helping hand to get by!On the economic message the Frosts own their own business and commercial property, have two jobs, work hard and own their own home. On the social front, they are a white nuclear family that goes to church and stayed married even after the incredible stress of two kids being severely hurt in a car accident that was not their fault. On the education side, they used government support (like vouchers) to opt out of public school and go to private school.
They work hard, own property, didn't divorce, had children, use private schools and they still need extra help from the government just to get by.
This goes against everything the conservative Republicans tell us about how to live our lives...
In other words, the hard-working, law-abiding, upstanding Frost family creates massive cognitive dissonance for Republican True Believers. And we all know how uncomfortable cognitive dissonance can be (I did something wrong, but I can't be a bad person, so I must not have done something wrong, or whatever I did must have been justified, etc.) In this case, what options did Republican True Believers have to resolve their intense cognitive dissonance? First, they could have been intellectually honest, re-evaluated their political belief system, and concluded that conservatism is fatally flawed. Second, they could have tried to make some sort of oh-so-clever argument, such as that this case is the exception that proves the rule (or whatever sophistry they could come up with). Third, they could have gone on the ATTACK!!!
One guess as to which option they chose. Hint: it wasn't #1 or #2.