Conservatives seem to prefer fetish politics to substance politics. Fetishism is that form of thinking where you imagine that if you make a little doll representing your opponent and stick a pin in it that you thereby get rid of the real guy. Thus conservatives seem to imagine that people will be more patriotic if you ban burning the flag. That we will be more devout if we say a prayer in school; the list is endless.
Fetish politics does have the advantage of being a simple, emblematic way to rally the troops, and it manages to avoid real issues and complexities. If its just Terri we protect then we don't have to worry about the real consquences of a general law on maintaining end of life cases.
I wonder though if fetish politics may not be related to a more general tendency toward archaic thought forms in conservatives? A Piagetian framework holds that belief in moral absolutes is a sign of arrested development.