…just a few comments with regard to this:
As has been already pointed out regarding the Stephens-Davidowitz’s study, the Google data may be already tilted towards the internet crowd which may not be representative of the US population in general. However, the study does make a good point here:
Google data, evidence suggests, are unlikely to suffer from major social censoring: Google searchers are online and likely alone, both of which make it easier to express socially taboo thoughts (Kreuter et al., 2009). Furthermore, individuals say they are forthcoming with Google (Conti and Sobiesk, 2007). The large number of searches for pornography and sensitive health information adds additional evidence that Google searchers express interests not easily elicited by other means.
As a Southerner, I do not think that the net 3 to 5 points in voter loss is excessive. The data sorted by US states certainly showed a higher propensity to bigotry (“racial animus”) south of the Mason-Dixon Line which seems plausible. Additionally, I would not automatically assume that the new 3 to 5 point loss would have been recovered as Obama votes had the 4 to 6 point bigotry loss been erased. The negation of a vote against a candidate does not necessarily imply a vote for a candidate, there is the option for not voting at all.
There may be some liberals that would take the bigotry percentage as an indicator of “all Republicans or conservatives” but that position would not be supported by that low of a percentage and I think, untenable. Just as some conservatives suggest that “all Democrats are socialists or communists or even fascists (viz. Goldberg)”, the folks that take that position are on the fringe right and not mainstream Republicans I would think.
On another topic, I agreed with your discussion of pomocons (post modern conservatives) albeit probably coming from a different perspective. I have a few discussions of my own on this topic:
http://mixermuse.com/blog/2012/01/02/what-is-a-postmodern-conservative/
http://mixermuse.com/blog/2012/02/01/postmodern-rationalism/
I even found a post modern Mormonism web site if you can believe that:
http://mixermuse.com/blog/2012/02/11/postmodern-mormonism/
While post modernism (viz. Foucault) could allow for pockets of rationalism (via archaeology and genealogy), and thus escape extreme skepticism, the meta-language that is imputed to these pockets is denied by post modernism – probably correctly in my opinion. It is just as humorous to find pomocons that take their leave from Darwin and Machiavelli as it is to find liberals that bask in the will to power of Nietzsche. I certainly can appreciate the anti-totalitarian push in post modernism and the destruction of the ‘natural’ hegemony of the Enlightenment; I think that the canon, the logocentrism of the text, cannot be so easily and vapidly dismissed without committing a greater crime of psychological and sociological denial and repression (thus perhaps an ‘eternal reoccurrence’ of the same). The work of deconstructing the zeitgeist is not merely ‘subjective’. Perhaps the Renaissance may be thought of as a kind of beginning deconstruction of Latin domination and the Enlightenment itself as the final blow to a deprecated form of Hellenism. If so, post modernism would be a thrust against the notion of essence and origin, of “Truth” whether textualized as scientific, religious, idealism, humanism, etc. but in so doing run the risk of nihilism…perhaps Nietzsche was right that nihilism would be the triumphant going under of man and the arrival of the Übermensch… perhaps simply the silent release of Buddhism…perhaps a Heideggerian second beginning. In any case, in whatever form post modernism cloaks itself (pluralism, egalitarianism, anarchism, Darwinian elitism, etc.) it is here to stay, the Great Babylon has fallen (with great confusion) we will all live in the pieces of humpty-dumpty. Conservatism as re-instituting the past will inevitably have to resort to the force and repetition it ascribes to its nemesis. Its claim on virtue is just as soiled as its nemesis; as an unbearable weight of the past. I think we live in Nietzsche’s prophecy of the death of God and now we are beset with the hard work of hearing for the first time or dying in reactionary radicalism and disparate, meaningless acts of reconstitution.