A lot of people who don't believe GOP scandal allegations believe the claims are propaganda ploys. That is undoubtedly a large part of it. Darrel Issa and GOP TV, Fox News, selectively disclose innuendos and suppress more credible findings that contradict their accusations of wrong doing by Democrats. Getting to the truth doesn't appear to be a goal. Discrediting Democrats with false charges and getting out the vote by working their wing nut base into a mouth foaming frenzy do. The GOP can rely on the public being uninformed, especially among their base, and the media being either inept or purposely deceitful. CBS and ABC were also caught reporting false stories and while there were retractions, ABC still hasn't identified the "Republican congressional sources" who lied to them about the content of Administration Benghazi email. ABC didn't do much to discourage sources from lying to the media in the future. Lying is protected as free speech. Fox News won the right to lie to you for the entire media, not just for themselves.
Still, there could also be some more honest intentions involved. Are they lying to themselves? Perhaps that is a question for Stephen Colbert. I can't think of anyone who has more insight in to the conservative mind than he does. If his parody of the CBS Benghazi story had a serious message, it seemed to be that the media just makes stuff up and they believe whatever they want to believe. His concept of truthiness and his complaint that reality has a liberal bias might also be arguments for the view that conservatives genuinely do believe their false beliefs
Psychological studies have also shed light on this subject. A study by Yale political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler showed that conservatives cling all the harder to their false beliefs when they are confronted with evidence that disproves them. Other studies have linked conservatism to low-effort thinking. In one, the answers to questions people in bars gave became more conservative as they drank more. To the extent that conservative beliefs are attributable to an inability to think critically, their beliefs would be honestly held beliefs.
History has shown that conservatives believe the end justifies the means. On the surface this supports the argument that conservative misinformation is nothing but purposely deceitful. Declassified LBJ tapes indicate that Nixon may have undermined the Paris Peace Talks during his campaign against Humphrey, by promising a better deal if he is elected. Although it was vastly under reported by the media, more evidence has surfaced that Reagan made a deal with Khomeini to hold Americans hostage while Carter was president. The Republicans on the Supreme Court decided that there wasn't time to recount the Florida votes and they appointed Bush. The media consortium recount found that the four counties Al Gore selected for a recount, in accordance with Florida's original recount rules, wouldn't have changed enough to justify a state wide recount. The counts in the heavily populated Democratic counties he chose were almost spot on. The consortium also found that the counts in less populated rural Republican counties were skewed to favor Bush. Maybe the need for Republicans to con people into voting against their own interests is a root cause of their dishonesty. Sort of an evolutionary process. Candidates who didn't lie enough, or well enough, didn't get elected. But Romney might have been an exception, and a case of overdoing it. Hopefully his loss meant that they at least have to tell the truth once in awhile. (continued below the fold)
Conservatives probably have a more pessimistic view of humankind to begin with, but isolation is another important ingredient of conservatism. The isolation can be geographical, or come from the conservative media bubble. And their isolation reinforces the conservatives' belief that a lot of people think like they do. Remember how Romney was going to win the last presidential election? And remember how the Fox News misinformation bubble misled Romney into making the biggest flub in presidential debate history, with his "acts of terror" fiasco? This brings me to the role GOP projection plays in conservatives honestly believing their scandal allegations. They think everybody has the same disregard for life that they do. They think treason is just part of the game. Deception is a necessary means of achieving an end. So, of course Obama must have used the IRS against conservatives. They know Obama must be encouraging illegal immigration to get more Democratic voters because there is no such thing as empathy. It is obvious that Obama and Clinton lied about Benghazi because anyone would have used those types of tactics and lied to cover it up.