The Republican party has become the party of superstition. Their fear of President Obama is vast -- much akin to the fear many of us felt in 2005, when we realized that George W. Bush had been reelected with control of both houses of Congress, and a plan to destroy Social Security. Their only refuge from their fear is their pure belief in ideological magical thinking.
(Note: much of the research on cargo cults below is from wikipedia and other web sources).
Magical thinking is nonscientific causal reasoning. An example is the cargo cults of Oceana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Cargo cults became particularly widespread during and after World War II, when isolated peoples on South Pacific islands came into contact with advanced 20th century technology and cargo for the first time. The huge quantity of military materiel, brought in by parachute, on cargo planes delivered on cleared jungle runways, and on ships, astounded people who had little contact with outside cultures. But in the march from island to island in the Pacific Theater, staging areas near the front lines shifted month by month and sometimes week by week, as the allies fought their way toward the home islands of Japan. These staging areas were often abandoned as quickly as they were built.
As the outsiders left, the Islanders embarked on an effort to continue to receive these blessings from outside. Islanders came to believe that the cargo was sent by their ancestors, and that the outsiders' had figured out ways to entice the ancestors to bestow the goods. They reasoned that the elaborate clothing, gear and rituals carried on by the outsiders were all for the purpose of bringing this material wealth. All they had to do, then, was to perfectly mimick the outsiders' rituals and magical implements. Cargo Cultists built coconut mat landing strips; carved "headphones" from wood and wore them; built "control towers" and manned them; carved wooden firearms, and marched about as they had seen the outsiders do in their military drills and parades.
One particular cargo cult on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu is the "John Frum" cult. It is believed that "John Frum" is a corruption of "John from America" or some other place, though possibly there was a WWII serviceman by the name on the island. Cult members march wearing symbolic colors. The 51st annual "John Frum Day" was celebrated on February 15th, the day of the year when John Frum is expected to return. The cult still exists today.
Since 1988, the Republican party has been the party of the Cargo Cult. In Ronald Reagan, they learned what they take to be eternal lessons for how to gain and wield power. They venerate Reagan; they emulate Reagan; and they believe Reagan's inerrant gospel.
The greatest of Reagan's accolytes to date is George W. Bush. Bush notably snubbed all that his father, G.H.W. Bush, did that differed from the purest Reaganism. His father's successful Gulf War multilateralism was replaced by Reaganist sword rattling and intentionally distancing our allies and simultaneously alarming our adversaries. His father's acceptance of a tax cut to stem out of control deficits was replaced by a fixed "tax cuts good, balanced budgets bad" mentality harkening back to the Laffer Curve and David Stockman.
But Bush turned out to be a lousy president, who failed on just about every level that a president can fail on. What, the Conservative Cargo Cultists wonder, could account for this? The answer is clear -- Bush's spending and his interest in elementary education, thereby expanding the federal government, were acts of apostacy from the pure religion of Reagan veneration. These troubling doubts can be driven off by recognizing that Bush was not a true apostle of St. Ronnie, and by rededicating themselves to the True Vision of the B-movie actor from California.
Only when we understand that the conservatives' world view is fundamentally different than that of most Americans -- built around magical thinking about a supposed golden age in the early 1980's -- can we understand what is happening in the Republican party, or recognize what will happen in the next election cycle or two. What would appear to be politically suicidal behavior -- the Republicans' lemming-like jump off the cliff on the Stimulus package, their inability to think of policy solutions that are not based on cutting taxes for the rich, embracing Limbaugh as the ideological leader of their party, and having Sarah Palin still leading their pack of candidates for president -- make perfect sense if the goal is to reserect Reaganism.
Magical thinking is nothing new to a party that believes that cutting revenues increases revenues, that instructing children on prevention of STDs leads to promiscuity, or that the Darwinian theory of evolution needs to be balanced in school curricula by ancient superstitions and creation stories. The next 4 years will be brutal, however, to a party that sees its only hope of redemption in recreating the Reagan years out of coconut mats and carved headsets.