Many conservatives have a loose relationship with facts. The right-wing denial of what most people think of as accepted reality starts with political issues: As recently as 2016, 45 percent of Republicans still believed that the Affordable Care Act included “death panels” (it doesn’t). A 2015 poll found that 54 percent of GOP primary voters believed then-President Obama to be a Muslim (…he isn’t).
Why are conservatives so susceptible to misinformation? The right wing’s disregard for facts and reasoning is not a matter of stupidity or lack of education. College-educated Republicans are actually more likely than less-educated Republicans to have believed that Barack Obama was a Muslim and that “death panels” were part of the ACA. And for political conservatives, but not for liberals, greater knowledge of science and math is associated with a greater likelihood of dismissing what almost all scientists believe about the human causation of global warming.___
Also known as the “I must know more than every scientist to ever live” effect
I honestly think this ties into a core flaw of conservativism, the same one that causes them to respect authority too much to question it. In their mind there’s an almost tautological essence that someone in power can do no wrong. They ignore missteps because they “must have earned their position” but then say they deserve their position because they haven’t made any missteps. Same goes for the climate change thing: surely they must have the right opinion on it, since they’re smart! And they’re smart because they have the right opinion. Isn’t life so easy?
This is also why they try so hard not to “lose”. To them, there are winners who never fail, and losers who never succeed. They will ALWAYS try to save face or say “let’s agree to disagree”, because they do not fundamentally accept that failure is a method of improvement. This ties into black-and-white thinking as well.