What the hell are Republicans so angry about?

A recent poll conducted by Fairleigh Dickenson University asked various audiences if they felt that armed revolt in the near future might be necessary to protect our liberties. According to the results, a surprising number of Americans, nearly 30 percent, said yes. When it came to Republicans, however, the number jumped to 44 percent. Almost half of the Republicans asked think we might need to don camouflage, load up the 12-gauge and take to the streets of Des Moines. Wha…?

Here’s my question. What the hell are Republicans so angry about? Yeah, they lost the last two presidential elections, but the previous eight years were all about them. Republicans own the House of Representatives and have stopped or stalled a good deal of Obama’s initiatives, including background checks. State governments around the country are working vigorously to turn back the clock to pre-Roe v. Wade America, and school boards across the South are rewriting school textbooks to include conservative fables in place of facts. Nearly 80 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians.

My guess is that a major source of strong negative feelings among conservatives is the palpable hatred of that socialist, Kenyan, America-hating Barack Obama. It doesn’t matter that the man is a very, very moderate Democrat, that he’s left in place many of Bush’s national security measures, that he’s gone so far as to accept Social Security cuts in his budget proposal, that he’s bombing suspected terrorists with drones across the Mideast, he’s a black man with a funny name sitting in the Oval Office.

Add to this the hysterical right-wing media machine attacking the President 24/7 and I guess you have a rebellion in the making. Not to worry. The revolution will never materialize. Go back and look at video of the Republican National Convention and scan the crowd. You’ll find a sea of overweight, silver haired white people who spend their evenings watching Dancing With the Stars, not reading revolutionary tracts and breaking down assault rifles.

Republicans may be angry, but it is a misdirected, personal anger that will not translate to an organized uprising. Somewhere deep down in the dark recesses of their psyche I think they realize they are losing the battle with progress, and while maddening, they understand that defeat is inevitable and armed resistance futile.