Election 2012: Romney in a Landslide?

From Salon:

...Many conservatives simply refuse to accept this state of affairs. There are two reasons. The party hacks – including those in the Romney campaign – worry about turning out their base. People like to vote for winners, and if they believe their candidate is likely to go down in defeat, they may decide to stay home and do some laundry next Tuesday. They fear that if their candidate looks like he will be beat it can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Projecting an image of a strong candidate with good momentum keeps their voters engaged and enthusiastic.

For the rank-and-file, there’s something else going on. Research suggests that political conservatives tend to have a greater need to avoid cognitive dissonance than liberals. The right has spent 4 years painting Obama as not only a failure and an incompetent, but a dangerous radical; a crypto-Muslim with dictatorial tendencies who may not even be an American citizen. The idea that such a horrible monster could be re-elected causes painful cognitive dissonance, which they’re trying to manage by grasping at any straw they see.

This can lead to some truly comical efforts to twist reality into something that conforms with their world-view. Here are 5 examples, from the top of the Republican ticket to the bottom of the right-wing fever swamps...