Cintra Wilson nails it, in the following extract from an article in today’s Salon:
She writes: Republicans have — in a P.T. Barnum, sucker-born-every-minute kind of way — successfully framed themselves as the custodians of Christian ethics and conservative family values. This stance successfully masks their wholesale class war against the majority of their supporters, who continue to vote blatantly against their own economic interests in thrall to this deliberate emotional manipulation. It was the media critic Douglas Rushkoff who pointed out, several years ago, that Republican politicians were employing marketing techniques perfected by Clotaire Rapaille. Rapaille, broadly paraphrased, introduced a theory that approximately 80 percent of all decision making is done at the level of the limbic system — our lowest, most colorless, reptilian emotional level. Republican strategies are consistent with a belief that the voting process, for most people, is full of feelings — but devoid of reason.