A number of them are caught in the mentality (excuse) that everyone else would act the same way if given the opportunity while at the same time taking it for granted, unstated, that public opinion must be dictated to the unthinking masses (who, for the purposes of this rationalisation, definitely don't do more or better work than an executive). Therefore the only possible explanation is that their personal political enemies have fooled the people into hating them, and that's the whole mechanism in play.
Whether or not that's the whole mechanism or not is the central gambit of the current Republican playbook, in a similar way to the gambit around whether the content of work actually matters is a gambit around the AI biz. If you're thinking that this would require them to select for candidates who are less likely to have any kind of conscience... then yeah, I think we have always agreed on that part.
I'm of the opinion that this is part of the social cycle around the development of new, more accessible communications technology... When it takes a person less personal effort to compare their experience with an actual contemporary than it does to ingest the cognitive dissonance that goes along with buying into corporate marketing or political messaging... it might take them a while to notice that, but when they hit an inflection point there's a lot more options for them than just being stuck in the cult.