I haven't seen this expressed directly, so I'm just throwing this idea out here.
Is the difference between Bush voters and Kerry voters their objects of fear? I think 9/11 has hit Bush voter's world view a lot harder than it hit those of liberals/cosmopolitan people. A lot of liberals have absorbed the lessons of the civil rights era and Vietnam, and learned that Americans have much to fear from themselves. We know that our actions as a nation can be wrong. So the hatred and fear behind 9/11 was a little easier for us to understand.
Thus, Kerry voters find Bush's bungling and overreaching in Iraq to be obvious and scary. They're also more willing to believe that terrorism is a crime and can be contained through policing actions.
Main points below
Bush voters never saw America that way. They've never really believed that America could do wrong. To them Vietnam was either a non issue or America didn't go far enough. To them the civil rights movement was not a movement to right the wrongs America as whole had wrought against specific Americans.
9/11 didn't make sense to them, because they don't see the past American punches thrown against the world. Before 9/11, they were Conservatives who were mostly happy with their lot (except economically and maybe culturally, and there were always taxes, queers, abortionists, and the mud people to blame for them - any surprise that they all came up this election?) and never saw any reason to make changes to their lives or their belief systems.
After 9/11, they reacted to the incomprehensible (to them)threat of people hating Americans by becoming reactionaries. To them, they couldn't be wrong, so when the world goes wrong it can only be rectified with a stronger does of their prejudices. Fighting a war in Iraq was easy for them, because Saddam Hussein was already established as evil by everybody. Going against queers and immigrants was easy because it enforced their prejudices. Going after taxes was easy because why can't they keep what they've worked for. They really don't expect bad consequences to fall out of these actions, because they're red blooded Americans, they tautologically cannot do wrong.
In the 5 steps to acceptance, they've never managed to move beyond fear and anger. And one thing they don't fear, and we do, is an overreaching and authoritarian America.
If this analysis has any validity outside my own head, there should be no surprise as to why Kerry or any Dem would have lost them this year. We didn't reaffirm their Americanness, we argued that America as a whole could be fallible, we offered solutions to problems that they don't believe exists. Bush's personal likeability or Kerry's personal stiffness (and I don't buy either meme for a second)had nothing to do with it, the 51% who voted Bush projected themselves onto Bush and hated the Dems for questioning their cushy little hidebound world.
It's dead simple. We gotta treat them like the immature people in power that they are. (I'm kidding, but only half kidding)