Public Policy Polling has a new swing state poll out for Ohio [pdf] and it finds that 6% of the people there believe that Mitt Romney is responsible for the death of Osama Bin Laden. If you get into the crosstabs, 15% of self—described “very conservative voters” feel that way.
Ezra Klein explains what’s probably going on here:
[V]oters have trouble crediting politicians they don’t like for policy outcomes they do like. And killing bin Laden is a policy outcome they do like. And so partisan effects have led some Republicans to argue that Obama was not primarily responsible for killing bin Laden or, even more absurdly, that Romney was responsible.
Since there is no “Obama does not deserve credit” option, conservatives take the closest answer available — that Mitt Romney deserves credit. In other words, given the options, they prefer an obvious lie to the truth.
Then again, there are a lot of birthers out there, so there may be no limit to how delusional some conservatives can be.
