You seem to still be focused on this subject as a partisan cause celebre, but at least you're edging closer to understanding what I'm talking about.

Authoritarian conservatism is a facet of human nature, and as such everyone possesses it, at least as a potential. Almost all of us have to express it in at least part of our lives: In family, school, and employment, we routinely submit to Authority. We're all intimately familiar with it. This routine feature of primate social life only becomes a problem when ruthless people deliberately exploit it.

Anyone can exhibit AC behavior, regardless of what ideology they declaim. It's something outside of the superficial divisions between Left and Right, because people in either group can move outside those regions of thought when they begin to follow a charismatic or strong leader, and the Strong Leader becomes more important than the original belief system. It's a bit of a throwaway line with nevertheless a grain of truth in it: The Right has demagogues, the Left has gurus. A rose by any name...

What I'm getting at is that it's possible for a person of either political polarity to behave as an authoritarian conservative in service of any ideology. A citizen of the Soviet Union submitted to Authority and thought along extremely conservative lines, in supporting the power status quo and relying on the strong leadership to keep them safe, including safe from change. Soviet leaders were careful to always portray the world as a dangerous place and the Rodina surrounded by implacable enemies; they too knew how to exploit authoritarian conservatism.

There's no such thing as "authoritarian liberalism" because it doesn't already exist in the human psyche to be tapped by demagogues. I'm not even sure how to parse that phrase, because of its inherent contradictions. What can happen is that authoritarian conservatism can arise out of an extreme Leftist milieu, as people turn to a strong leader, who might be spouting Leftist ideology, but is nevertheless an Authority; and all Authority figures know that fostering a conservative mindset among the people maximizes power and longevity in power.

(I hope my use of capitalization is helping to keep it all straight. A "Conservative" is an American who adheres to a Conservative political philosophy, while "conservative" refers to a way of thinking. The two terms are not congruent.)

Authoritarian conservatism is not an ideology, it's a state of mind.

Any discussion of authoritarian conservatism these days necessarily focuses on Republicans for the simple reason that they're in power and have the opportunity to exploit it from a position of Authority. The risk from the Democratic side is entirely theoretical, at this point.

Is the threat the same in absolute terms? I don't think so. The Soviet Union eventually collapsed in part because the reality of authoritarian conservatism is more at odds with the ideology they espoused; the "liberation" rhetoric slammed hard into authoritarian rule. There's a smaller distance to travel, with fewer contradictions, from a Conservative ideology, which expresses precursor ideas such as respect for (if not entirely submission to) Authority, and a preference for maintaining the status quo and a suspicion of change. I want to stress that a Conservative isn't necessarily already an authoritarian conservative, just that a Conservative starts out closer to that state and is easier to manipulate into it.

Or to put it another way, can you possibly imagine the Democratic Party getting itself organized and disciplined enough to truly capitalize on authoritarian conservatism? They try from time to time, but it seems to me that threatening the elderly with Republicans taking away their Social Security is a pretty tepid power play. Choking to death on pollution is another fairly frightening image, but it's a lot more abstract and postponeable than Bush's visions of mushroom clouds, anthrax, and terrorists hiding in the closet.

I also don't want to wimp out and not point out that many Conservatives are already authoritarian conservatives. The GOP is mining a rich vein of AC in their "social conservative" wing. Religious fundamentalism is authoritarian conservatism, writ large with worship of the ultimate Authority figure. The moralistic rhetoric is most appealing to authoritarian conservatives, because the message is that obedience is a matter of morality, and ACs are being good little boys and girls when they obey Authority.

"Authoritarianism is neither just left or right.", but authoritarian conservatism is universal.