I think the main reason for the lack of support from conservative voters in Europe can be summed up by 3 words. George W. Bush.
Yes. No doubt. Nothing at all.
Calling those European countries who were not willing to help him "the Old Europe" was the far greatest, worst, and most insulting insult Europeans can think of.
It was like : "You don't want to play with me ? Then I call you a game breaker, an old fart, an acient aberration which will soon be replaced by THE NEW ORDER which will be like me !" - To put it rather cynically.
Americans still don't realize how much damage G.W.Bush did to the European-U.S. relationship.
I even hear some Americans call Obama a Socialist. That is because Americans have never be governed by true Socialists like we have in many European countries. The truth is that the Democrats would be considered a right wing conservative party if they had been in Europe. The Republicans are even more right wing. It's like having to vote between light blue and dark blue parties. So left wing Europeans see the democrats as the lesser "evil". Only the far right wing parties in Europe support the Republicans these days.
Yes, I agree to this, mostly. Not everything, but most of it.
So the root cause for the problems in USA and Europe is that production in our countries is too expensive and we allow our companies to be flagged out to Asia. How can you change such a trend? Jobs are disappearing by the Millions and the governments lack the power to turn the trend.
You are missing the fact that Chinese workers demand higher wages nowadays.
Yes, it's true.
China is slowly, but steadily growing into having similar problems, although it will still take years.
My personally worst fear is nowadays that the whole U.S. economy - and even the whole society ! - is currently distorted, changed into something that suits the model of "rent seeking".
"Rent seeking" is defined as manipulating and chnging parts of economy and society so that the top people can receive a "rent" out of it.
Monopolization is such a thing. You monopolize a certain field of economy - all serious competors vanish - money trickling up stays stable. The heads of near-monopoly companies won't never even have to worry about their rents.
They even manage to sell it so to the public that this is "the American Dream" : to become SO BIG that the "life after working" won't be troubled by financial worries anymore.
Lobbyists are hired guns err people who nudge squeeze and shift politicians into directions which - in the long term ! - help the "rent seeking" bosses getting more income. Through laws, what else ?
The whole society gets distorted by cutting wages so much that the more curt is there, the more is left for the "rent seeking" people. In short : America is poor BECAUSE the top of the society is beding it to their "rent seeking" needs !
You can read descriptions of what "rent seeking" is here :
http://americablog.com/2012/07/stig...king-not-production-an-essay-on-rentiers.html
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentSeeking.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
The (mostly African) Kleptocracy is just another form of "rent seeking" behaviour.