Ginsue,

This is a bit out of my field of expertise, but I think that the reason they can't see it is because they psychologically can't accept them as doing nothing but harm.

I believe that most people in congress and politics in general are power-lusters. There are two things a power luster will never do, related to each other:

1) Let his victims know that he's a power lusting parasite who craves control over people
2) Let himself know it

People can't live with the idea of "I am an evil son of a bitch." The rhetoric you hear out of them is genuine, in that I am fairly sure that 99% of the people who say it believe it with all their hearts. The reason they are blind to the facts is because, if they looked at the facts objectively, their own moral status would become clear to them and they would not be able to operate on a day to day basis. The genuine sociopath is a rarity and the rest of humanity's scum make excuses that paint them as the "good guy" constantly, in the face of all reality.

Psychological self-preservation, in other words. I don't expect to enlighten them or change their minds because I know that they aren't innocently in error. I don't think one can be a statist, innocently, anymore. Maybe back in the 20s, but not with almost a century of modern statism of all stripes to show the clear results.