Markos has cut conservatives like Rove right to the bone with his poll about the GOP. Unintentionally, this has struck them at a very deep psychological level in the weakest point of their armor of emotional denial.
Conservatives are heavily motivated by shame and guilt, in fact they often seem to go through the cycles of sin and contrition as if they are as addicted to shame as any other vice.
But why is this? As Max Blumenthal documented in "Republican Gomorrah," many of our leading conservatives come from spectacularly dysfunctional families. Rove had a hard time coming of age in Utah, abandoned by his his father. Then his stepfather left the family to come out as flamboyantly gay, and later his mother committed suicide. Likewise, Glenn Beck's mother and stepbrother committed suicide. And so on.
This dysfunctional upbringing creates the authoritarian mindset:
Protect the family secrets.
Hide the bad craziness at all costs.
Punish the traitors who reveal secrets.
Markos broke the ultimate taboo- he revealed teh crazy.
Link to the front page article about the Dk poll and wingnut hissy fit
http://www.dailykos.com/...
To continue.......
Blumenthal described horribly abusive families. And in every family where the kids get beaten from head to toe more or less randomly, they don't need to be told that if anyone tries to get help or reveal the awful family secret, the abusive adult is likely kill every one of them. This may go unspoken, but the abusive adult is likely to add a massive dose of verbal abuse and guilt. Often, the abuser is married to an extremely codependent spouse who verbally abuses the children and tells them that they deserve their physical abuse.
This fear and guilt is so unbearable that some family members will ally themselves with the abuser. Family members that aspire to some sort of normal adult life are likely to be ostracized. Just applying to colleges is likely to be seen as some sort of betrayal that shows the child "thinks he's better."
Family members will protect their abuser even if everyone else knows the truth. The secrecy is so ingrained that children will lie to social workers even when abuse is obvious and documented.
Many people will carry these mental shackles the rest of their live and experience a pervasive suffocating sense of guilt. Sometime the guilt is combined with rage, and the guilt is projected onto innocent bystanders, who are accused of some disloyalty and attacked. These rage-aholics are the authoritarians.
They are still trapped by constant shame, guilt, and secrecy, and an incredible sense of denial that the people in charge could simply be abusing them. Any violation of secrecy must be punished. Suddenly Republican ideas of national security fit into an understandable model - everything is about secrecy and torture, as if the country could be run like an alcoholic family living in a studio apartment.
And that is why the DailyKos poll was so damaging to the psyche of people like Rove - it exposes the crazy to the world. Even though the world knew, these guys have been in deep deep denial. Suddenly they know that people are looking at them and these people know their dirty little family secrets. For people like Rove, it hits a nerve deep in their shame and guilt driven personalities.
Update
Just to highlight a couple of my coments downthread - the exact same set of conditions can have exactly the opposite effect and create a liberal, in the same way that many atheists are created by the fundementalist upbringings.
A generation ago, the average alcoholic was likely to be sticking up for the little guy like the hard drinking film noir hero, then Betty Ford made it OK for Republicans to have substance abuse problems, and now you can have AA meetings packed with dittoheads. It can break either way for a person. The same upbringing can create a rebel or an authoritarian.
As Erich Fromm wrote in Escape From Freedom, even the authoritarians are petty rebels. He wrote that in 1941, but he would instantly recognize the secessionists of today. Even the most extreme authoritarians have the rebellious streak, even the most rebellious personality tends to loop around and display a streak of authoritarianism.
But if this upsets you, go to Al-Anon or other support group. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars, go directly to Al-Anon. Hopefully you be spared the moment where you thought that you were doing everything in your life differently, but then you wake up in cold sweat with a realization that you have somehow recreated your parents' marriage down to the smallest detail. That is your destiny, and it'll sneak up on you if you lose your focus.