The GOP has had its philosophical flesh picked clean, replacing its muscle with a zealous minority of intolerant shills, the dregs of the "Reagan Democrats," as its front. Their leaders are unaccomplished products of nepotism who claim the mantle of American exceptionalism to explain their patronage and wealth. They rise to levels of authority and prominence, not on their own merit, but on the shoulders of those who went before them. Position rather than accomplishment is their basis for recompense. They use their silver spoons as proof of their own genius and that the American Dream is alive and well. They sell that dream to the shills, tell them that they too can achieve the same great wealth if only they are all protected from the threat of government interference either by regulation or taxation; omitting accident of birth from the formula and never opening the books. If only this energy would be harnessed to demand real justice.Countless members of the Republican base live in tremorous fear of a threat to their own successes if Democrats have their way. They bought their articles of faith from the conservative cafeteria and mixed them on their trays among their strongly held personal beliefs. Good salt of the earth Americans quake in their boots and spin like dervishes in response to the effectively toothless regulation and tax boogeymen shamelessly paraded by GOP movers and shakers. The facts are that few of these zealots will face any practical dilemma resulting from either; they are simply the hustlers' hustlers. They, like most of us, aspire to success, but they have bought the lie that their success would be punished by progressive policies. The world changes and this leaves them nonplussed. Perplexed, they are afraid and their fear morphs to anger; their anger has been channeled and misdirected. They rant against the kinds of regulations that recently protected their savings from bank failures and against taxes on estates the size of which they can't even imagine they will amass. They have been trained to blindly support policies that are counter to their own interests and object to policies they do not understand and that will never touch their lives. This may go a long way to explain the mob mentality at recent public gatherings.