It's amazing. The party of there is no racism, learning about racism is bad, and confederate flag waving racists, think they are the same people that freed the slaves.
These people are straight up evil delusional sociopaths. They are the core type of people that do the horrific shit many countries have perpetrated in history
To be so cognitively dissonant is psychotic.
Yes, they also like to focus on the socialism part of National Socialism while ignoring the crucial nationalist part.
You're overthinking this though. These people aren't psychopathic, per se, they're just incompetent and lazy, and terrified that people will find that out. They don't know anything about politics or economics, and they can't be bothered to actually study and learn anything about these subjects (that's for liberal elitists!), so they abdicate their thinking to a groupthink that tells them that their self-serving "common sense" and intuition are always right, and that anyone who dares point out that they might be wrong is the enemy.
And so voila! the confederate flag is heritage and the modern-day GOP is still the party of Lincoln, both at the same time. Because believing that is convenient and self-serving, and anyone who points out the obvious disconnect is a commie liberal elite who hates freedom, because bizarre over-the-top attacks like that are the laziest way to silence criticism.
And like all lazy and incompetent people, they're compulsive liars, because truth and knowledge and critical thinking (especially self-critical thinking) are hard work.