Democracy Corps did a series of focus-groups with Republicans in Georgia and found them
living in their own special reality (PDF). Having survived a life surrounded by such people, I might have saved Carville and his friends a lot of trouble.
Put simply, the “base” of the conservative movement has many of the usual characteristics of a cult.
I’ve adapted this checklist by Janja Lalich, Ph.D. & Michael D. Langone, Ph.D which is used by evangelical organizations to identify cults. The contrasted quotes come straight from the study’s findings. All emphasis is mine.
1) A cult of personality
The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.
While they continue to defend George W. Bush personally, his presidency is an embarrassment to them and represents the culmination of a creeping betrayal of conservative values that started with the election of his father more than 20 years ago. The lionization of Ronald Reagan in these groups was as strong as we have seen for any political figure, as was the desperate desire for a new Reaganesque figure to lead them out of their current wilderness.
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Glenn Beck, however, received nothing short of adulation from these voters, particularly the women. They believe he embodies the best of conservative media – determination to unearth the stories the liberal media tries to bury, love of country, and refusal to be intimidated, even as the liberal media unleashes waves of attacks on his past and his credibility.
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Two aspects of the discussion on Beck among conservative Republicans were particularly noteworthy. One was a common fear among the women for his personal safety, a belief that his willingness to stand up to powerful liberal interests was putting his life, as well as the lives of those working with him, in danger. Of course, his willingness to face this danger head on only adds to his legend.
The other is the commitment these voters have made to Beck and his show. More than half of the respondents in our conservative Republicans groups indicated that they try to watch or listen to Beck on a daily basis, with some going to great lengths to ensure they (and their families) do not miss a thing.
2) Information filtering and special knowledge
Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished. Mind-altering practices are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s). Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.
A central part of the collective identity built by conservative Republicans in the current political environment is their belief that they possess knowledge and insight that the majority of Americans – whether too lazy or too misguided to find it for themselves – do not possess. A combination of conservative media outlets are the means by which they have gained this knowledge, led by FOX News (“the truth tellers“), and to a lesser degree conservative talk radio. Their antipathy and distrust toward the mainstream media could not be stronger, and they fiercely defend FOX as the only truly objective news outlet.
Several of the women particularly talked about becoming a sort of truth police, spending a great deal of their personal time and energy watching FOX to get the real stories, then turning to CNN, MSNBC, and the networks to document their failure to cover the “real truth.” It was unclear what they did with this information once gathered, other than share it with others within this group.
3) 
Skewed normative psychology
The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (for example, members must get permission to date, change jobs, marry—or leaders prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, whether or not to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth).
Conservative Republicans passionately believe that they represent a group of people who have been targeted by a popular culture and set of liberal elites – embodied in the liberal mainstream media – that mock their values and are actively working to advance the downfall of the things that matter most to them in their lives – their faith, their families, their country, and their freedom.
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The religious undertones to this language – planting a seed, a people awakening – are unmistakable and speak to the fervor of these partisans. This is about an attack on their most closely held beliefs and values, and they will not simply turn the other cheek. They passionately believe that, through their hard work and determination, Obama and his agenda will ultimately be defeated. They celebrated the tea parties as early signs of this movement coming together, talking about the tea parties in first person despite not having attended any events themselves.
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Not surprisingly given our previous research into the centrality of faith to the politics of conservative Republicans, there are clear religious overtones to this nostalgia for the founding fathers. With little specificity to their history or its implications for today, they express an unshakable belief that our country was founded on Judeo-Christian values and must return to those values to get back on the right track.
4) A sense of mission
The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members (for example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar—or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity). The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society... The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
In our focus group discussions, we quickly noted how they routinely used plural first person pronouns to describe a group of individuals (including all those in the room but extending far beyond those walls) who share a set of beliefs, knowledge, and commitment to oppose Obama that sets them apart from the majority of the country. Democrats may joke that Republicans seem to live on a different planet sometimes, but in some important ways, these Republicans would happily agree.
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There is no doubt in their minds that the ultimate goal of this strategy is to change our country to a socialist nation. In their minds, this is the key to truly understanding the Obama presidency and what is happening in our country today. Everything goes back to government control and Obama (aided by Democrats in Congress and the liberal media) seeking to systematically strip away individual rights and insert government into every aspect of our daily lives.
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The final aspect of the collective identity shared by conservative Republicans is the call to action. The attacks they suffer for their values and the special knowledge they share as a result of their devotion to conservative media and active rejection of mainstream media are ultimately meaningless if it does not help defeat Obama and his hidden agenda. This is where the sense of collective purpose is greatest. They see a nascent movement building, still not fully realized or activated but with a growing number of people watching and listening, growing increasingly frustrated, and looking for ways to stop the growing threat they perceive.
5) Special destiny
The leader is not accountable to any authorities. The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members’ participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group.
This concern combines with a profound sense of collective identity. In our conversations, it was striking how these voters constantly characterized themselves as part of a group of individuals who share a set of beliefs, a unique knowledge, and a commitment of opposition to Obama that sets them apart from the majority of the country. They readily identify themselves as a minority in this country – a minority whose values are mocked and attacked by a liberal media and class of elites.
They also believe they possess a level of knowledge and understanding when it comes to politics and current events, one gained from a rejection of the mainstream media and an embrace of conservative media and pundits such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, which sets them apart even more. Further, they believe this position leaves them with a responsibility to spread the word, to educate those who do not share their insights, and to take back the country that they love. Their faith in this country and its ideals leave them confident that their numbers will grow, and that they will ultimately defeat Barack Obama and the shadowy forces driving his hidden agenda.
Ahem.
Of course, there are some cult characteristics Lalich and Langone don’t address in their behavioral study. For instance, there is the sense of apocalyptic doom that always shows up in the most dangerous cults:
First and foremost, these conservative Republican voters believe Obama is deliberately and ruthlessly advancing a ‘secret agenda’ to bankrupt our country and dramatically expand government control over all aspects of our daily lives. They view this effort in sweeping terms, and cast a successful Obama presidency as the destruction of the United States as it was conceived by our founders and developed over the past 200 years.
And as always, this belief is fueled by paranoid conspiracy theories about a “New World Order” and “hidden hands:”
They are actively rooting for Obama to fail as president because they believe he is not acting in good faith as the leader of our country. Only 6 percent of these conservative Republican base voters say that Obama is on their side, and our groups showed that they explicitly believe he is purposely and ruthlessly executing a hidden agenda to weaken and ultimately destroy the foundations of our country.
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Closely related to this well-established notion of a secret agenda is a hidden set of liberal elites or power brokers who have guided and directed Obama as a puppet, helping him to reach the highest office in the land. It is simply implausible to them that Obama has reached this position on his own without some greater force at work.
The logic is impeccably circular and immune to facts in what I have called “The Samsara of Wacky.” Of course, Beck’s “issues” are their “issues:”
Conservative Republicans do not oppose Obama’s policies simply because they think they are misguided or out of partisan fervor. Rather, they believe his policies are purposely designed to fail. When they look at the totality of his agenda, they see a deliberate effort to drive our country so deep into debt, to make the majority of Americans so dependent on the government, and to strip away so many basic constitutional rights that we are too weak to fight back and have to accept whatever solution he proposes.
Fear of government control is at the heart of virtually all of the concerns raised by these voters about Obama’s agenda, and it is literally a fear of two things – government and control. They see government as inefficient, ineffective, and corrupt and believe it preys on the middle class and ‘hard-working Americans.’
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They exhaustively cite examples of this strategy at work, starting with the bank bailouts, the takeovers of Chrysler and GM, and foreclosure assistance making homeowners dependent on government for their homes. Another example repeatedly raised by conservative Republicans that undoubtedly reflects the power of FOX News and conservative commentators among these voters was their concern over President Obama’s policy ‘czars’ wielding power over every issue with no accountability.
The final, and in many ways most important, piece of evidence they cite is the planned government takeover of health care. The notion that Obama’s health care reforms represent a government takeover of all aspects of health care is an article of faith; they reject as laughable the suggestion that it might not, pointing to his arguments to the contrary as further proof of his determination to lie and deceive to fulfill his ultimate agenda. Even after a description of the health care reform plan in our recent polling, these conservative Republican base voters reject it by a 59-point margin, with nearly two-thirds (64 percent) strongly opposed to reform (77 percent total opposed).
In the minds of the cultists, race issues have been subsumed by conspiracy theories. Racism is still alive and well, but hides in Teh Wacky™:
We find further evidence of this pattern of deception in questions they believe have not been adequately answered or investigated about Obama’s background, including his place of birth, his education, the authorship of his books, the degree of his associations with controversial figures including William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, his work as a community organizer, his links to ACORN, and his service in the Illinois legislature. Again, they see a unique pattern of secrecy and subterfuge, abetted by either incompetence or willful neglect by the mainstream media.
As David Corn put it,
These days, explicit racism is widely regarded as unacceptable. Yet it’s quite possible that unsupported folly of this sort has become a stand-in for outright racial opposition. If a conservative can assert that the problem with Obama is that he fronts for a diabolical enemy within, is a secret Muslim, and has mounted a coverup to hide his birth in Africa, then this right-winger can tell himself (and focus group moderators) that his feelings about Obama aren’t about race. But here’s the question that needs asking: Why do conservatives — especially Southern conservatives — believe all this rot?
Relying on years of observation, I can give Corn an answer: they believe this rot because they want to believe it. The Manichean, black-and-white worldview is convenient to their frightened little minds. They choose to believe this rot for the same reason they choose to believe in creationism: because that’s how they wish the world worked.
And as we’ve seen with the Junior Bush experiment, that’s how they actually govern.
If there is a surprise conclusion to all of this, it’s that Obama has little to fear from the teabagging hooplehead cohort. Perhaps the most telling finding of the Democracy Corps study is the way these Republicans look at their own national party and conclude it has become part of Teh Evil Plan™:
And yet remarkably, these voters had virtually nothing positive to say about the Republican Party. They see their own party as weak, old, and out of touch. They feel it has lost sight of conservative values and conservative voters and is in desperate need of new leadership. They identified a clear disconnect between ‘the people’ and ‘the politicians,’ which poses a growing threat to the party’s ability to challenge Democratic control in Washington.
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Conservative Republicans in our groups could not have been more negative in discussing their own party. They see the Republican Party as ineffective and rudderless, controlled by a class of political professionals who have lost touch with not only the people but the conservative values that should guide them.
The disconnect these partisans see between the party leadership and the party faithful is at the root of their discontent. They have no intention of leaving the party per se – they still believe it is the best and only means of opposing Obama and the Democratic Congress – but they also have little confidence in its current direction or leadership, and there is an emotional distance that can be damaging.
Asked what their party needs to reinvigorate itself and close the gap between its leaders and its rank and file, these conservative Republicans are almost unanimous in their solution – new leadership. And although they expressed some hope for a variety of names (Gingrich, Romney, Huckabee, Jindal), there was only one figure who truly excited them and created real passion – Sarah Palin.
Little wonder the GOP “brand” is at an all-time low. Ever since the “tea parties” began, I have been saying this would happen. The Republicans Party faces a dilemma: either pander to this new, paranoid cult, or disown its own base.
The conservative movement voter today is convinced — and cannot be un-convinced — that sinister forces of global evil put a socialist community organizer in office for the terrible purpose of destroying America. They actually believe in Teh Evil Plan™ and vote accordingly. Corn again:
GOP chairman Michael Steele, Republican congressional leaders, and the party’s 2012 presidential contenders will have a tough time remaining in the real world while courting conservatives who reside somewhere else. But if GOP leaders don’t join the underground movement hailed by these conservatives, won’t that indicate that they, too, are part of the Obama conspiracy?
To which I say:
Quod erat demonstratum!
So my representative in Washington is switching from the Democratic Party to the Republicans? Shock!
