Perhaps you are overintellectualizing this. There is nothing new about this particular strain of American conservatism, To paraphrase Edward Abbey, they are neither new nor conservative, but old as Babylon and evil as Hell. This is fascism, pure and simple, of the good ole Mitteleuropa variety; a colloidal suspension of nationalism, racism, nativism, militarism, and fundamentalism. The genius of the American strain is that there is no need for a Fuhrer. Anybody can be Fuhrer, just start your own business. And if the business fails, you get a full kit of ready-made excuses.

It sources are the same, a lower middle class suddenly faced with the prospect of declining expectations, the end of the American Dream. They see the promises that were made to them suddenly withdrawn--their children will not be as prosperous as they were, and perhaps, they themselves will not be as prosperous as their own parents were. The middle class welfare programs are drying up. For a variety of reasons, America's postwar party is over, it peaked a generation ago, and those days will never be back and they know it. Its getting harder and harder to deny it is happening, or pretend it can be reversed.

What they cannot accept is that it is all the result of their own actions, or those of the classes they aspire to join, or perhaps even just the arc of history itself. Shit just happens, sometimes there is no conspiracy. But it is difficult to blame oneself, one's heroes, or even blind chance for one's misfortunes. It needs a scapegoat. The Nazis had their Jews and Communists, Americans have had blacks and immigrants. The genius of the post-Goldwater conservative movement is the ability to transfer the role of scapegoat to the Liberal, whoever the hell that is. Here is where the American propensity for anti-intellectualism comes in so handy (Hofstadter wrote about that too). The Eternal Liberal is an effeminate, over-educated, filthy rich elitist; unlike our humble cloth-coat conservative. The Liberal elitist is a thinly-disguiised version of the Red's filthy capitalist pig--that rich guy in the top hat and frock coat we can conveniently blame all our problems on. The role-reversal is so obvious it can easily remain undetected and unsuspected--in plain sight. The capitalists have succeeded in recruiting their victims to collaborate in their own exploitation.

Fascism is the dictatorship of the middle class, its characteristics are ignorance, fear, and hate. It's lizard brain brain origins are narcissism and paranoia. Just mix in some New England Puritanism, Midwestern Babbitry and some Southern Jim Crow and season to taste. We have all been here before.