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People of the authoritarian bent are looking for daddies, not leaders. That was the appeal of Ronald Reagan: The congenial but tough-minded dad. Goldberg says it explicitly in the excerpt above: "I can just see him yelling, hey you kids, get off my lawn. I love it." Cheney is the cantankerous neighborhood dad who doesn't brook any misbehavior from the local kids.
Yet these people (the Goldbergs, Hasselbecks and the like) are seen in the public mind, paradoxically, as representing the tough and individualistic strain of the American psyche. In reality, they are merely soft and frightened little children looking for someone the hold their hands and reassure them as they face the scary world.
