For instance, people who lost their minds that Bush misled the public on the WMD's in Iraq, were just fine arguing the fact that Obama lied when he said if I like my doctor, I can keep my doctor or when he said my health care costs would go down $2,500/year. I'm sorry, but you can't accuse one party of lying, then defend your guy when he lies.
The problem with where we are now is that people's realities are too closely tied with their political views. So even when they are presented with facts, it's hard for them to accept it as being true or reliable.
"Republicans" say rip it out, go back to what we had before, don't adopt anything from it.
"Democrats" say to keep it and try to fix it.
Can it be fixed? Who knows. But ripping something out because it isn't perfect after two years is completely insane.
The US has a completely broken healthcare system and handing it back to corporations isn't going to fix it.
Except that people like a lot of the individual provisions of Obamacare, like no denying based on pre-existing conditions, kids staying on parents' health insurance until they're 26, etc.
It just doesn't do much to control costs. The current healthcare system has neither a single-payer forcing hospitals to keep costs down, nor much in the way of market incentives to keep costs down (since most people pay for healthcare indirectly via health insurance, and even that is controlled by their employer).
Problem is, they don't have anything to replace it with yet.
I don't think the Republicans want to go back to what it was before. I think they want to keep some of the good things about it like being covered for preexisting conditions. I also know Republicans want to allow insurers to sell across state lines which would increase competition and drive down costs. People on both sides of the aisle have been saying this for years.
confirmed:
Modify existing law that inhibits the sale of health insurance across state lines. As long as the plan purchased complies with state requirements, any vendor ought to be able to offer insurance in any state. By allowing full competition in this market, insurance costs will go down and consumer satisfaction will go up.
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/healthcare-reform
There's actually some other good ideas in there too.
Maybe if you had more similar examples?
One thing we have to be careful about is wrong associations, equating two things that actually differ subtly. As they say, the devil is in the details.
My advice is to read the most informed, reasonable representatives of different viewpoints you can find, and then see why they disagree. Often people will play fast and loose with the facts in order to convince people they consider less educated, but when directing their words towards those they consider their peers, they will be more honest.
An example from the right is the many economists who should know better refuse to distance themselves from the idea of the "Laffer Curve", the idea that you can raise revenue by lowering taxes. Even though they know the Laffer Curve is bullshit, they don't want to refute it because it is a useful rhetorical tool.
An example from the left is that most moderate liberals agree that black Americans commit much more crime (EDIT: I meant "per capita", personally I think a reasonable reading of this comment as a whole would take that as implied) than white Americans. However, they don't want people to hear this fact except in the context where it's already agreed that the main cause for this is structural factors (i.e. a cycle of poverty, crime and lack of education). So in liberal circles this fact is "obvious" and "uninteresting" since the real question is how these structural factors operate. And yet at the same time, outside liberal circles this fact is considered "racist" and liberals do nothing to clarify that it is in fact true.
Source: http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=datool&surl=/arrests/index.c...
Do you think there are the same number of blacks and whites in America?
It is also common to hear the supposedly neutral statement that “black people commit more crimes than white people.” This “fact” is used to justify a belief that black people have a natural criminal propensity, or that a “culture of violence” is to blame for problems faced by black people in America.
...even though there are roughly five times as many white people as black people in this country, blacks and whites are incarcerated in equal numbers. But the fact that black people are incarcerated five times as frequently as white people does not mean black people commit five times as many crimes.
(incidentally this is exactly the kind if article that moderate liberals should be refuting, and in turn the article should acknowledge that moderate liberals also believe blacks really do commit more crime).
[0] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-farbota/black-crime-rates-...