A New Poll Shows The Republican Party Has Completely Collapsed in Virginia

[sofa king]

70. That's the percentage of right-wing-authoritarians.

Here's an article I wrote on RWAs, years and years ago. I cross-posted it here and then this fellow was good enough to put it up on his own site, so it's still out there:

http://njvetcaucus.blogspot.com/2009/04/gun-toting-nazi-lemmings.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1198020

Here are some choice quotes from that:

The right-wing authoritarian is very much alive and well in America, and statistically identifiable. When John Dean examined the mystery of President Bush's thirty-percent "basement" of approval below which he rarely drops, statisticians explained to him that 23 percent of all Americans are right-wing authoritarians whose approval of this President will never waver (the remainder of his approval is explained by the less-than ten percent of Americans who are getting filthy rich off of Bush's policies, but even those supporters have withered away in recent months). A recent study showed that 76 percent of Americans feel America is ready for a black president. RWAs can easily account for almost all of those who don't.

The right-wing authoritarian exhibits behaviors almost too hilarious to countenance, until one recalls that they're running the country. They're recognized by faulty reasoning (including espousal of contradictory ideas like support for the death penalty and opposition to abortion); hostility to outgroups (such as ethnic and religious minorities); an array of character attributes such as dogmatism, zealotry, absolutism, hypocrisy, and bullying; and an inability to recognize one's personal failings and the failings of the leaders they follow.

Or, as John Dean described it, they're "over the cliff" followers, like goose-stepping lemmings. They're also extremely hostile to attacks on their world-view, which should make the mailbag entertaining.

___________

Since writing that article I've applied the 23% rule to all sorts of things in American politics, with pretty good success. All last year and even before that I wrote about how Mitt Romney was going to lose that election because he had betrayed RWAs and couldn't find a way to make them forget:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=31624

Right-wing authoritarians were the reason why the GOP did not dare try to get any mileage out of the distressing number of domestic terrorist events that occurred in President Obama's first four years. The perpetrators in many of those events were RWAs who considered conservative talking heads and their ally the Republican Party to be their political leaders, which meant that domestic terrorism was scrupulously avoided by all Republicans last year.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=journals&uid=142845&page=5

Romney's inability to win over the RWAs was the primary reason for the choice of a guy like Paul Ryan, whose negative numbers were nearly as high as his positives. It was necessary because right-wingers noticed how Romney gamed the primary system and knocked off their arch-conservative heroes one by one. Ryan didn't help.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1111460

One of the most annoying things about RWAs is that they can be politically programmed through a cognitive error called "The Backfire Effect." RWAs are therefore also, I contended, at the root of the reason why President Obama did not rise to take the bait from Romney's absurd number of lies that he told in the debates. Mitt Romney needed the President to call him a liar, because as stupid as it sounds, that is how Romney would have established himself as someone RWAs can trust. Don't try to make sense of that! The point is that right-wingers can't, make sense of it, and can be duped into thinking what their political masters want them to think.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021469106

The RWAs are also, I contend, the ones who are taking the brunt of the Republican-generated economic crises. Their refusal to accept health care is going to kill them. As they sicken, they sell off their properties (or have them foreclosed) and move into cities that have the health and transportation services they can no longer otherwise afford, and their votes are automatically canceled out by the larger numbers of people who know better.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1816684

The Great Republican Die-off is going to be one of the larger human tragedies the United States experiences over the next decade.

I insist on pointing out that these people, even though they are political rubes, are often very good people, and it's a travesty that it is legal to intentionally deceive these people and to use that deceit to rip them off as they have been so ripped. Their hatred and racism is programmed into them; I refuse to believe that it cannot be programmed back out by finding a way to give them dignified, peaceful lives free from deliberately created fear.

This is why the Republican Party must be destroyed forever. They are the spiritual slave-owners of these people, who are shackled by their own inability to think well.

Edit: It is important to point out that even though I'm quoting myself above, none of these ideas are my own. John Dean wrote about it. Al Franken wrote a whole book about it in the '90s (Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot). The original sociological studies were desperately trying to figure out who all those damned fascists were that burned into half a dozen parliamentary democracies in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. This means that Godwin's Law cannot be fairly applied to today's Republican Party. These people very much are the American Nazis.