http://www.nytimes.c...

This NYT article entitled Evangelical Crackup may explain part of it.

This may be the key:

Just three years ago, the leaders of the conservative Christian political movement could almost see the Promised Land. White evangelical Protestants looked like perhaps the most potent voting bloc in America. ***Today the movement shows signs of coming apart beneath its leaders. It is not merely that none of the 2008 Republican front-runners come close to measuring up to President Bush in the eyes of the evangelical faithful, although it would be hard to find a cast of characters more ill fit for those shoes: a lapsed-Catholic big-city mayor; a Massachusetts Mormon; a church-skipping Hollywood character actor; and a political renegade known for crossing swords with the Rev. Pat Robertson and the Rev. Jerry Falwell. ***

There's more in the article of interest.  But one would have to agree -- the main GOP candidates are going to be tough for the religious right to digest.

There's something more, though, in my opinion, and it reflects a struggle that is manifest throughout recorded history.  That struggle is often termed "the battle of the sexes."  One can see it played out in, e.g., religion.  (I personally think that many religions have tried to use ancient writings such as the Bible to subjugate women.)

Why is the right so angry?  Because there is a good chance that a woman may become president.  Hillary Clinton has been on the right's radar for a long time.  If you make nice and pretend to be sympathetic to the nutty part of the right, you can literally get them frothing about Hillary.

Let's look at someone like Cuccinelli.  His extreme abortion position is rejected by an overwhelming majority of voters.  Most voters wants to have at least some abortion rights (rape, incest).  Is he just being a religious zealot in the pure sense?  Or is he really just a plain old misogynist?

Now it turns out he's buddies with one Stuart A. Miller, a self-professed champion of men's marital rights.  Taking a close look at Miller's writing, the text seethes with hatred:

Boys, who used to learn from men how to be honorable and ethical and participate as responsible adults in their culture, are now being taught by women how to get a job. It's like training eagles to eat grass.

http://www.strike-th...

This Miller quote is not unusual for him.  Miller's advocacy of what can be a respectable position (e.g., fair treatment for both sexes in custody proceedings) is reduced because one can read, and feel, the anger towards women as the motivation.

So, does Cuccinelli have the same feelings towards women?  Is his faith a cover for those feelings? Why was he so close to this guy?  Were they birds of a feather?

I do know that one reason I'm voting for Cuccinelli's opponent, Janet Oleszek, is that I have daughters.  Because, quite frankly, I think their futures will be dimmer if the Cuccinellis of the world continue to stay in politics.

This is a long-winded way of saying -- yeah, the right is angry because we're likely to have a woman president and they have lots of issues with that.

Think about the angry conservatives that you know.  Those I know, are basically afraid, timid, and worry warts.  I think because of these characteristics they feel most comfortable being rigid in their views of how things "should be".  They just don't have the "nerve", capacity or desire to think things through and analyze the situation, any situation. It is more comfortable for them to put themselves in a "them against us" attitude to avoid having to think something thru to determine it's validity. Here's a compilation of the conservatives' personality traits that I've found on a web search --

Adherence to dogmatic and fundamental religion

Commitment to the status quo 

Strict regulation of individual behavior

Militarism

Preference for people of one's own kind

Resistance to change

Refusal to accept new ideas

Superstitious

Fatalistic

When the world isn't headed in the direction that they feel comfortable in, they take on these characteristics above.  Whether you are born with timidity, fear and worry, I don't know.  But hey, I even have them in my family!!  And it's so hard to reason with them. 

to get all wrapped up in anger and skip over emotions like sadness, worry, and fear?

If you carefully listen to a rightist/ conservative/Republican, 9 out of 10 times you'll not hear rationality, you'll hear fear and worry (the sadness is usually buried or hidden). 

Edmund Burke:  "No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear."

Louis D. Brandeis:  "Men feared witches and brunt women."

Al Gore:  "When an emotional reaction like fear is especially strong, it can completely overwhelm our reasoning process."

Us moderates in the middle of both parties, you now us fiscal conservatives, see it as merely two well funded bullies on the block..one socially conservative bully and one liberal bully...eventually they gonna fight.

First you are a social conservative.  Then you are just a conservative.  You love the tobacco and coal industries.  You long for the Democratic Party of your parents.  Now you are a moderate and fiscal conservative.  I don't think all those conservatives add up to a moderate.

Are you experiencing identity diffusion?

So, an Ap-Ipsos poll that came out recently showed that: "Democrats were more superstitious than Republicans over opening umbrellas indoors, while liberals were more superstitious than conservatives over four-leaf clovers, grooms seeing brides and umbrellas."

On fatalism, conservatives are centered around the importance of individualism.  That would not fit with fatalism.  How can you emphasize the importance of personal freedom and individual choice while thinking that individuals don't really have free will?  That does not seem possible.  The people we call "liberal" seem more prone to fatalism.  For example, a statement like: "Someone who was born into poverty and lacked education is destined to remain impoverished."  That is fatalistic and more attributable to someone who would call themselves liberal rather than conservative.  Though I can see also the statement: "In case of Rapture, this vehicle will be unmanned."  That is quite fatalistic.  And if you believe in an omniscient, omnipotent God, can you really have free will or is it just an illusion?  So maybe liberals and conservatives are equally fatalistic. 

After the Robinson High School debate I observed the following interaction between Kookinelli and one of his constituents:

CONSTITUENT:  "Please help me understand, how can you support public schools and have a vested interest in our schools if you home school all of your children?"

KOOKINELLI: "That is a real shit bag question."

This comes from our State Senator.  Several people witnessed this exchange and their comments ranged from what a "classless response" to "is that anyway to treat one of your constituents?"  Unfortunately, there is still no answer to the question and it's an important one.

Please read the above comment.  Thank you for disclosing this.  It fits into a pattern of behavior.

...the Constituent replied, "and that's why I've directed it to a real shit bag of a State Senator."

Look at how few people actually vote in the country, send money, work for a political party. When I think of the far right, I can't help but think of cults. I believe that leaders of the far right use some of the same programming techniques as leaders of cults
( http://www.csj.org/i... , an example)
Anger is a means that helps the leaders of the far right hold everything together. Angry followers of fox news, limbaugh, coulter, etc., actively work for candidates, show up at the polls in large numbers, and send loads and loads of money.

Maybe it's because they have experienced something quite traumatic.  Instead of dealing with the trauma in an emotionally mature, productive way, they have resorted to reaction formation and displacement.  This is not to disparage them; most people are incapable of dealing with trauma the best way, which is why we have therapists.

So, the traumatic emotion, I would posit, is that they felt that President George W. Bush and his pals were their infallible heroes.  Then through one single act, the Second Iraq War (this time it was personal), those same people managed to destroy these angry conservatives' party.  Rather than dealing with the source of the trauma directly, they are using reaction formation: "Blame President Bush?!?  Surely you jest, why we love and adore President Bush!  He is still our hero!"  And then also utilizing displacement: "Who we are really pissed at are Democrats and 'liberals.'  They are the ones ruining America and making us lose this war on terror."  This is also probably why they booed Ron Paul; because he was directly addressing the source of their trauma which in and of itself is traumatic.

It's understandable that being so close to achieving all you ever wished for and then having it crash down around you is traumatic.  Ahh!  The Department of Education lives to see another day.

As some comfort for them though, I would say all is not lost.  The staggering cost of this war, the additional debt wracked up over the Bush years, higher interest rates, a weak dollar, and the exponential growth in mandatory federal expenditures may indeed drown the federal government as conservatives have so desired.  We may all look back at this and label the period: "The Bush Years: The Triumph of American Conservatives."

The rapid pace of change today is very disturbing to many people, especially to the white male who feels assaulted and betrayed on all sides, threatening his historically privileged position.  Of course he's pissed.

Modern life is full of frustrations, and, frankly, I doubt that our vaunted American way of life is really sustainable long-term, anyway. Pity the poor middle-aged white male, threatened by all these uppity females, by peculiar-looking brown people who steal his job (and his women, sometimes), his future is no longer secure, he feels the ground shifting under foot. Of course he's angry, that's his normal condition.

It is the genius of the Republicans to have tapped into this anger and given it an objective scapegoat. The Nazis did it during the Great Depression, the Republicans do it today: abortion, gay marriage, illegal immigrants, independent women, irritating young people who scorn his values, that damned driver who cut him off on his long morning commute.  The Hell with everybody! Smash 'em!

Many of these are the ReaganDemocrats whom Webb has said should be returned to the Democratic Party for reasons of their economic self-interest alone--- the Republicans have diverted the attention of these former Dems away from their exploitation by corporations by objectifying their anger against some fantasy value "problem," and Webb has said we can get these lapsed Dems back by addressing their economic issues. In my opinion it will take a great psychic shift to convince them to pay attention to their economic self-interest, and deal with their irrational anger, or they will never acknowledge their economic self-interest. 

Once the Republicans taught them to express their anger politically (at a scapegoat) they have found it to be enormously satisfying, and will not want to give it up. I hope Webb hurries up working on this re-conversion.