What really scares the GOP and why?

The headline on Politico reads "Republicans fear sequestration gives Obama upper hand". The article isn't really about a political upper hand, though. It's about the fear of some in the GOP of how decisions concerning where the cuts will be made might be left in the hands of the evil man in the White House. Paranoia and hatred seem to be the primary motivators for these people. There isn't any acknowledgement of why this situation exists. Basically the GOP was determined to deny Obama anything that could possibly be defined as a positive achievement in his first term. Remember the famous quote about the goal of making him a one term president. In the back and forth over the fiscal cliff the proposal was made to set up something that neither side would like to see happen as a sword of Damocles threatening both parties that would hit after the 2012 elections, presumably forcing something more rational and fine tuned to be developed after the pressure of the election cycle was over. But there were many factors that weren't really accounted for including the undying hatred for Obama even after the election, the willingness to take the chance of a double dip recession on the part of the more conservative elements of the GOP and the basic innumeracy of much of America. In a country with a third of a billion people and an economy that regularly uses numbers in the billions and trillions people are still far too impressed by those who measure things in whatever way helps their agenda instead of looking at multiple ways of viewing the numbers and questioning which way really is the most important one.