Reply #22: I wrote an article about it years back.

[sofa king]

Support for inequality and resistance to change are the two main results of the fear which motivates right-wing authoritarians, which explains some of the hypocrisy pretty well.

But they are also very poor thinkers (relying instead on "authorities" to tell them what to think) and can be easily programmed, so I suspect that many of their hypocritical positions--the ones not obviously rooted in fear--are actually evidence of programming by their authoritarian leaders.

You're going to see a fine example of what happens when two hypocrisies collide here soon, as defense contractors bitterly fight it out with the rest of the uber-rich to see who's going to take a half-trillion dollar hit in the debt negotiations. They in turn are going to buy different talking heads and news outlets to catapult their propaganda and win the "programming" war, and the GOP organ is going to find itself playing two clashing tunes at once, just before the primary season opens. What makes this case interesting is that it will be two trusted conservative authorities each trying to shout down the other with their own set of lies which won't match.

I hypothesize that that conflict will "short out" many RWA voters, reduce campaign donations from them (not important since corporations are the big Republican backers now), and lower voter turnout in the primaries and the general election. The magic number is 23. That's the percentage of RWAs in America, and it shows up everywhere. If that base level of support drops below 23% for the worst and most batshit insane Republican primary candidate (maybe Bachmann?), then I think we can conclude that the split has temporarily ablated conservative voters.

http://www.gonemagazine.net/?p=175