In early August, I began working on a book to document a growing sense of paranoia among right-wing conservatives. At the time, the media was fairly quiet on the subject. With the exception of liberal blogs (ahem), no one paid much attention to the wild rhetoric of the tea parties and occasional paranoid outbursts from commentators like Rush Limbaugh and politicians like Michelle Bachman. Then Sarah Palin loosed her "death panels" broadside, and the floodgates opened. Health care paranoia spewed from the orifice every conservative media outlet, Lou Dobbs embraced the "birther" conspiracy, Limbaugh raged about Obama's Nazi agenda, Glenn Beck launched a week-long tour de paranoia in which he accused Obama of preparing for a fascho-socialist revolution, and D.C. roiled as rabid conservative activists congregated in the Mall. Suddenly, the mainstream media took notice, and articles about the new "paranoid style" of the American right rolled across major newspapers, magazines, news sites, and talk shows. TIME Magazine even put Glenn Beck's tongue on its cover.

Now, as TPM's Eric Kleefeld has documented, the consulting firm of James Carville and Stan Greenberg has validated the thesis of my Persecution Politics series: there is a very large, very determined block of conservative voters who have thoroughly embraced paranoid extremism. Based on the results of a series of focus groups, the organization concluded:

The self-identifying conservative Republicans who make up the base of the Republican Party stand a world apart from the rest of America...First and foremost, these conservative Republican voters believe Obama is deliberately and ruthlessly advancing a 'secret agenda' to bankrupt our country and dramatically expand government control over all aspects of our daily lives. They view this effort in sweeping terms, and cast a successful Obama presidency as the destruction of the United States as it was conceived by our founders and developed over the past 200 years.

These voters "identify themselves as a minority in this country - a minority whose values are mocked and attacked by a liberal media and class of elites." They believe that these elites "are actively working to advance the downfall of the things that matter most to them in their lives - their faith, their families, their country, and their freedom." In short, they believe themselves to "persecuted."

The sense of persecution, along with egotistical confidence in the validity of their own world view, has fostered an attitude of quasi-religious evangelism. They feel "a responsibility to spread the word, to educate those who do not share their insights, and to take back the country that they love. Their faith in this country and its ideals leave them confident that their numbers will grow, and that they will ultimately defeat Barack Obama and the shadowy forces driving his hidden agenda."

Their hero, of course, is Paranoiac-in-Chief, Glenn Beck "They believe he embodies the best of conservative media - determination to unearth the stories the liberal media tries to bury, love of country, and refusal to be intimidated, even as the liberal media unleashes waves of attacks on his past and his credibility." They even fear for his life, believing "that his willingness to stand up to powerful liberal interests was putting his life, as well as the lives of those working with him, in danger. Of course, his willingness to face this danger head on only adds to his legend."

And their favorite candidate for the next presidential election is, no surprise, Sarah Palin, in whom they see their own reflection: "They see in her the uncompromising personal conviction and integrity that they admired in Bush, but with an authentic conservatism that reflects her personal background. The one point they all agree on is that Palin was a victim of an unprecedented smear campaign. Reflecting in many ways their feelings about themselves as a group, they say Palin was targeted by the liberal media like no other figure in modern history because they both feared her and hated her for her unwavering values and beliefs."

This paranoid Republican base represents "one-in-five voters in the electorate, and nearly two out of every three selfidentified Republicans," which means that current Republican legislators must accommodate them, and the next batch of Republican political candidates will likely be the most extreme that the nation has seen since the 1950s. If you haven't been taking them seriously, you should. The tidal wave of paranoia shows no sign of slacking. With a weak economy and an active Democrat-controlled government, conservatives are rattled and vulnerable to paranoid narratives. The growth of cable news, talk radio, and blogs have produced a right-wing echo chamber in which conservative commentators shout ever louder to make themselves heard over the shrill cries of their colleagues, and listeners measure the plausibility of each new conspiracy theory against a swiftly falling standard. We are witnessing a race to the bottom of a bottomless pit.

Unfortunately for the nation, I expect to have plenty of material to write about for the foreseeable future.

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Stay tuned for more crazy talk in my Persecution Politics series at dagblog.com.