No one likes to have to do all of the work of changing paradigms in the middle of the stream.
When Obama took office, the voters had had enough of Republicans. But as a nation we were still trapped in the very powerful cultural and political atmosphere of fear imposed by the Republicans after 9/11. The paradigm of the Right Wing had been shoved down America’s throat for so long that everything…and I mean everything was approached, examined, and acted upon from a RW viewpoint.
All issues, policies, statements and actions were not based on what was right for the country, what was morally right, or even what would work.
All issues, policies, statements and actions were determined by how they would be viewed through the imposed Right Wing Paradigm that had been established, with the help of appealing to and exploiting deeply primal fears, by eight years of Cheney/Bush.
This is not a condemnation.
That sort of ‘politickin’ was necessary for political survival in the paradigm that existed then.