The most unusual form of cognitive dissonance we apply to politics is the “Party X wasn’t committed enough to Ideology A, so voters punished them by electing Party Y, who favors the essentially opposite Ideology B. Party X can prevent this from happening again by committing further to Ideology A!” thing.

Imagine if you tried to write “Americans clearly want more social programs, but were impatient with the Democrat’s slow pace in rolling them out, so they elected Republicans explicitly committed to cutting social programs instead”. You wouldn’t be able to do it without laughing, it would be too absurd. So how is it you were able to write this?