I voted for Adults today. Who did you Vote for?

I was talking to a friend who has a vast knowledge of things technical and spiritual and I said how much I'm loving Al Gore's book The Assault on Reason. We were talking about some of the underlying reasons people support certain politicians. I mentioned that Sara Robinson over at Orcinus has two great posts on the characteristics of people drawn to movement conseratives. People who John Dean classifies at Right Wing Authoritarian (RWAs) personalities will go along with almost anything a candidate says and ignore all their crazy past actions and ineffectual leadership if they think that there is someone who gives them what they really want. Daddy.

RWAs would far rather curl up in Daddy's lap -- even if it means abandoning reason and taking the occasional spanking -- than try to deal with the world by themselves, on adult terms. This is also why RWA family and community relationships (as Lakoff has explained) are necessarily hierarchical. These people still need parents around, because they don't feel emotionally safe without the presence of a strong authority figure. Egalitarian relationships terrify them, because there's nobody in charge to make the rules and set the boundaries that keep people from hurting each other. And that's damned scary, because (as masters of projection) they're quite sure that everybody else in the whole world is also still five years old and playing by sandbox rules. Without a playground supervisor in charge, they know for sure that somebody will get hurt.

Both posts are excellent. I'll let you read them for yourself.
1) Leering Old Men: Another Take by Sara Robinson at Orcinus
2) Who's your daddy? by Sara Robinson at Orcinus. In which she talks about why Conservatives expect spankings.