There are many parts to how and why a democracy works but a vital core value is the acceptance by both sides of the legitimacy of majority rule. In particular it is not the acceptance by the WINNERS, that’s easy, but rather the very critical requirement demands that the LOSERS accept the outcome as legitimate. No democracy can last if the losers repudiate election outcomes. That is what’s been happening since the election of Barack Obama.
The Birthers are of course the visible centennials of that non-acceptance of the President’s election. All the vitriol over the healthcare law, its current motive to repeal, and other laws passed in the last session are all marked by a basic rejection of their passage as true law which is the hidden message behind the screams from the right. It is also the foundation of the Tea Party. For them, nothing that a democratic Congress passes is legitimate. It is also the foundation of the party of "no". Barack Obama was elected with almost 70 million votes to McCain’s 60 million but you’d never know it listening to the sore losers. They reject that reality. By the way Bill O’Reilly only garners 7 million viewers. And you don’t hear Democrats harping that the recent midterm results should be rendered illegitimate.
It also explains why the right often expresses laws passed as having been "rammed through". What that says is they reject the validity of a voting outcome, majority rule, and thus turn their back on the whole intention of democracy. In a surviving democracy, there is no room for violence espousing sore losers. This renders a culture’s democracy into a sort of window dressing. Something we see in banana republics and the Middle East. Obama is accused of turning his back on the Constitution when in fact it’s the Birthers, Tea Party, and "nabobs of negativity" that turn their back on democracy by rejecting majority rule—simple or otherwise.
These folks are so convinced within their certitude that when they lose a vote, they consider the outcome wrong. They have no self caution that they themselves might be wrong. Modern Republicanism and introspection seem to be mutually exclusive terms. Well wrong choices by voters do happen, but by and large; we embrace the democratic principle because we Americans believe strongly that on average, the voting outcomes, over time, are closer to the truth and fact than to fiction. But do all Republicans embrace this? To be a sore loser and consider voting outcomes illegitimate is to turn ones back on the entire democratic concept and of course our Constitution.
Remember, democracy only works when the LOSERS abide peaceably (maybe not quietly) by the results. We have certainly howled here when votes didn’t go our way. But the modern left, not even the extreme of us, has ever called for "reloading". And it’s not that they don’t have the room to work toward the next election, but to take to the streets, to jump on the public airways irresponsibly, to use the sound bites to preach anti-government, to demonize the outcome and then resort to violent firearm metaphors, calls for revolution, and maybe using bricks through district office windows and even greater, then that is rejection of our country’s principles of majority rule and fair play. It is they who are in a sense traitors to our American way of politics. It leads to (and did once) civil war. So you see, democracy is not just for winners but also for losers.