.) isn't there even a whole research area dedicated to all biases and other effects which make persuasion and arguing a quite hard problem? (not only in public politics, btw)

.)"People hear opposing views all the time -- they just ignore/hate them" ... and that tends to be the output of that research, btw ;) I personally wonder if it wouldn't be time to accept that nobody on earth actually can gather all insights, all arguments and for sure not all facts on any given topic and if instead of arguing against each other we should change the prevalent culture to arguing with each other (that's not a new idea ofc ;) and accept that every single argument even if provided by the utter worst "enemy" provides some additional information about the world which we should accept and incorporate into our ideas about the way to move forward... I think most of the time this valuable objective is not reached bcos of unwillingness to accept and understand diverging language and a tended culture (even official) of hyperbolic conflict.

So even if it seams to me the Reps. are talking nonsense at first, I'd rather try to find out what they really mean and what information drives them... nope, it does not make arguments and discussion any easier ;)