Professor Jonathan Haidt has two interesting articles on morality and Democrats and Republicans. He is, of course, coming at this from the Left and edge.org is the intellectual elite playground par-excellance, but his articles are both fair and extremely interesting and can provide genuine insight into what is going on today.
Succinctly, he claims that those on the Left have a view of morality that is almost exclusively based on harm/care and fairness/reciprocity. If an action doesn't harm others, you can do it, and people should treat each other fairly. Haidt calls this a two-foundation morality and claims that the most academic conceptions of moral psychology and moral philosophy is based on just these two foundations. Conversely, he claims that the Right has a view of morality that includes three additional foundations: ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity.
Here is his distinction:
"...We call these three additional foundations the binding foundations, because the virtues, practices, and institutions they generate function to bind people together into hierarchically organized interdependent social groups that try to regulate the daily lives and personal habits of their members. We contrast these to the two individualizing foundations (harm/care and fairness/reciprocity), which generate virtues and practices that protect individuals from each other and allow them to live in harmony as autonomous agents who can focus on their own goals"
Now, how might these alternative conceptions of morality play out? Someone on the Left would view love of country as not particularly moral-- being part of the unused ingroup/loyalty moral foundation-- and even immoral if patriotism led to preferencing citizens of one's own country over anothers. Hence, to the Left, immigrants should be able to vote in our elections, we should defer to international organizations, and our use of energy is not a problem because it is expensive, rather it is a problem because we are taking more than our fair share.
In other words, the Left looks at the Right as using a decision making process that contains Voodoo, while the Right looks on the Left as not caring about things that the RIght considers important.
Now, bring this around to the candidates. McCain's motto is 'Country First.' This is clearly in the 'ingroup/loyalty' zone and therefore not understandable to the Left. When Barack Obama goes to Germany, the Left applauds it while the Right scratches it's head: Doesn't he realize he's running for President of America?
This also gives an interesting texture to Laura Ingraham's comments on why the intellectual elite has problems:
"Populism rests on two great insights. First, it understands that the people (taken as a whole) are often wiser and more prudent than the elites. Average people are almost always respectful of tradition, while elites tend to act like an angry mob trying to tear down the old idols."
If you think about it, most Americans use some aspect of all five moral foundations in their decision making. This gives them an advantage over many elites who, while perhaps having much more studying under their belt, have spent their lives filtering their experience through only two moral foundations. Of course they are going to get things wrong.