What makes conservatives tick

At President Obama's healthcare town hall meeting about healthcare in Bozeman, Montana, one of the questioners in the audience challenged the President about how he was going to pay for everything, speaking slowly and clearly in a thick Western accent, bluntly telling him he and his people were lying about where the money was going to come from, namely, out of this guy's pockets.

Most liberals haven't the foggiest about what goes on in the mind of someone like this. They dismiss him as an ignorant hick and his concerns as racist. He, in turn, bristles at the total invalidation of his existence and concerns by Lib-er-uls, confirming the Republican accusation of "class war."

I'll help.

Everyone--whatever their politics are--wants self respect. Dignity. A sense of being in control of his life. No one wants to be a helpless slave who can't even figure out what's going on, much less have a say in it. And beyond his own individual concerns, everyone wants his tribe to have what the Germans call lebensraum--a place in the sun.

From this guy's viewpoint, the Democrats promise to strip him of all of that, and hand over his rights to people who neither look nor act like him.

And unfortunately the Democrats have played into this vision. Of course it doesn't help that the Democratic president isn't white and isn't (in these people's minds) American. But even if he were a white all-American guy, it is a fact that the Democratic Party has done everything in its power to confirm the picture the GOP paints of them. Support for illegal immigrants coupled with chasing after every group that isn't white guys from small town America has confirmed the GOP stereotype.

This distrust of a Democratic president was established long before Barry Obama was even a candidate.