"The psychology behind Republicans' Benghazi obsession"

[applegrove]

The psychology behind Republicans' Benghazi obsession

Updated by Zack Beauchamp at Vox

http://www.vox.com/2014/5/3/5675362/benghazi-sunstein

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Let's take a look back at the origins of the Benghazi controversy. After the actual attack on September 11th, 2012, Benghazi immediately became the top issue in both the right-wing press and, really, the whole American mediasphere. To conservatives, it was more than just a national tragedy. It was confirmation of their belief Obama wasn't up to the task of confronting anti-American extremists, beginning an availability cascade.

Then the Obama administration's initial story on Benghazi fell apart. The attack was a targeted strike on a US facility, not a spontaneous reaction  to an anti-Islam film. Conservative journalists and policymakers, already primed not to trust Obama, became convinced that there was a scandal. The Administration failed, then seemingly lied about their failure. They had to be hiding something!

Among conservatives, this argument hit dead center. They already believe Obama is a feckless, incompetent liar. They think he plays fast and loose with American national security, and the credulous mainstream media is in the tank for him. The details of the Benghazi incident fit so perfectly into this already-extant perception of the President that Benghazi — more than the IRS, Solyndra, or any other purported Obama scandal — became the evidence du jour of Obama's failings among conservative voters, politicians, journalists, and think tankers. As the belief spread, an availability cascade became both informational and reputational. Conservatives inferred from each other that there was something real here (the informational component), and believing in an administration failure on Benghazi became part of being a conservative in good standing (the reputational component).

So Benghazi became a classic Sunstein-Vermeule conspiracy theory. Conservatives became convinced the administration was covering up the truth about Benghazi and anyone who argued otherwise began to look like part of the conspiracy, or at least an unwitting dupe. A wealth of psychological research on group polarization shows that, when a group of likeminded people discuss an issue together, everyone's mind tends to shift towards the dominant view of that issue in the group. The more conservative legislators and media figures dug in on Benghazi, the more all conservatives were likely to believe in some kind of administration malfeasance.



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