But I think that's the underlying psychology. Bush was One Of Us and therefore every kind of arbitrary executive power was justified, because he was protecting Us from Them. Obama is One Of Them[*] and therefore everything he does is part of his scheme to steal from Us and give to Them. The hard-core Republican base seems to be taking these ideas as axioms and any fact pattern can be interpreted to make it consistent with those axioms. Republicans who don't believe those axioms to be true can nevertheless understand that if they want the hard-core base on their side, they have to tell it what it wants to hear.

A month or two ago, the Obama Administration announced that anyone who got email making specious claims about health care reform could forward the email to somethingorother@whitehouse.gov, and then they'd get a response refuting the claims. An anchor for Faux News jumped all over this, claiming Obama is collecting the email addresses of everyone who disagrees with him! He's compiling an enemies list!

[*]his race being one aspect of his Them-ness, but not the only one