“It takes two to lie.  One to lie and one to listen.”

- Homer Simpson

President Obama has responded to what he calls an electoral “shellacking” with a firm offer to find common ground with the GOP.  But is that even remotely possible with a party whose leadership is so hell-bent on destroying his presidency, and whose rising stars increasingly appear to have their beliefs grounded in lies?

The Republican victory in last week’s election was rooted in outright lies, distortion, and the widespread, irrational, and racist hatred for Obama.  Right-wingers swayed voters by systematically misrepresenting Obama’s policies—death panels, government takeovers, socialism—and reducing everything to simplistic bumper sticker slogans like “End Obamacare” and “Stop Socialism.”

While the Republicans spoke endlessly about what was wrong, never once did they offer any solutions.  The winner of Pennsylvania’s Senate race, Pat Toomey, was quick to jump on the “government’s too big” and “we need to reduce the deficit” bandwagons, but he proposed no solutions to address either of these issues.

In Ohio, John Boehner (R-OH), the gutter dwelling golem expected to become the next Speaker of the House, said “The American people were concerned about the government takeover of health care,” an outright lie.  He offered so solutions.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Boehner’s partner in the politics of sleaze, played to the base by repeating canards intended to weaken Obama.  “The American people watched the government running banks, insurance companies, car companies,” McConnell said.  Another lie, and no solutions.

Before the election, McConnell laid out the true Republican agenda: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”  Really?  This is more important that creating jobs?  More important than restoring the economy?  More important than bringing our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan?

Of course, the government didn’t take over the banks, insurance companies and car companies.  It propped up teetering industries, with minimal interference in day-to-day operations and the result is now a profit for all us taxpayers as those loans are repaid, with interest, in full.  The government didn’t take over any private financial institutions and now the financial industry must deal with new regulations to protect consumers.

The post-election rhetoric shows how the Republicans and predisposed media outlets such as Fox News continue to fine-tune the Right’s propaganda machine.  As the votes were counted election night, Fox’s Megyn Kelly said that “the vast majority of Americans don’t want” Obama’s agenda, such as health care.  One has to wonder if Kelly even watches her own network since  earlier Fox reported that 48 percent of voters told pollsters opposition to health care legislation influenced them to vote pro-Republican, while the rest said they either favored the new health care law or wish it had gone further.  Hardly numbers that can be construed as “the vast majority.”

All election evening long, Fox commentators hailed what they called the “repudiation of the Obama agenda.”  Monica Crowley labeled the vote “wholesale rejection” of Obama’s presidency even though his most recent popularity ratings hover around 50 percent.  Again, hardly a number that can be labeled “wholesale.”  Crowley should compare Obama’s 50% to the 30% approval rating the big “W” had when he left office.

The Obama-hating rhetoric is non-stop: he’s “the Antichrist,” “a Muslim,” a “socialist,” a “fascist,” a “communist,” “anti-American” and even “racist.”  Pollsters have found that across the nation, 57 percent of Republicans believe Obama is a Muslim, 58 percent doubt whether Obama was born in the United States, and 63 percent call him a “socialist.”  All of these claims are refuted by those bothersome little things called facts.  But, then, the Republicans are dealing in lies, not facts.

Now that they have control of the House of Representatives, will Republicans leaders even try to control the kooks who disrupted town hall meetings and hurled racial epithets at black members of Congress, and those who call Obama a terrorist or a thug?  Until Republican leaders repudiate those crazies, they can and should be tied together.  And they’ll make it that much harder to find common ground with Obama.

The Right is frothing at the mouth because Obama hasn’t cleaned up in two years the mess the Republican administration made in eight.  In the meantime, things are shaping up for total gridlock in Washington for the next two years.  Because, if the Republicans can’t have things their way, they want to make sure we all suffer.