Duelling Bouzoukis (4 Nov 2004 12:22 PM) is dead right--that's exactly how I framed it in my post of 2 Nov 2004 12:44 AM in the Election: Your Thoughts thread.

Emotion vs Reason

And fear is a powerful emotion.

Bush only had one string to his fiddle (makes for a limited range of tunes), but one string was all he needed, since he only had one tune-----fear; primarily of terrorists and homosexuals.

But his tune was a big hit--in fact it's a perennial favorite of all demogogues--Bush just followed in the grand tradition, throwing in a little hate also, since that's also a crowd-pleaser.