"We're not talking about people finding a system for maintaining and fulfilling a non-religion-dependent system of ethics. Mostly, we're talking about people who couldn't be bothered to think about right and wrong, and resent the people who do. I'd think for a non-religious conservative to cheer that would be like the religious right being happy about an explosion of goddess-worshiping, gay-friendly, Democrat-fundraising churches.
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You make two mistakes here, I think. First, I'm not particularly cheering the growth of the non-religious population. It doesn't really matter all that much to me, since I'm not part of any non-religious groups.
Second, it's really impossible to characterize the non-religious, since they don't fit any particular model. As you can see here on FR, there are non-religious conservatives. In fact, in my lifetime, I've met non-religious folks of pretty much every political stance.
Non-religious merely means that the persons doesn't profess any particular religious beliefs. Even people who are simple deists might self-identify as non-religious.
It's a mistake to assume that non-religious people do not have a highly-developed ethical and moral foundation. You'd probably not be able to detect any difference in the ethics and morals of non-religious people in general from the population which espouses some religious belief.
Being a political conservative does not necessarily mean you are automatically a Christian, even in the States, and conversely being a Christian does not automatically follow you will be a political conservative.
I grew up as Hong Kong Chinese and church in Hong Kong takes a divided approach in political discourse. On one hand there is no doubt they decry against abortions, gay marriage, pornography, drugs, but on the other hand, they are militantly socialist in economics and about as anti-military as you can imagine. Reagan was vilified as a warmonger in churches in Hong Kong, and Swedish approach to economics is taken as a step towards the right direction, while communism's economics aspects had been lauded as "a response towards the concerns about the effects of consumerism in capitalist societies". In other words, they really wanted a Communist society, but with people all of Christians and biblical morality. On a doctrinal level though, on issues like the Bible, Jesus, salvation they are strictly conservative evangelical (I would say they would approach fundamentalist as defined by places like
http://www.ifca.org ).
And on another side of the coin, we have South Park conservatives and hawkish libertarians who would believe in everything the Asian Christians described above oppose. People like Ayn Rand objectivists who are hawks on defence and WOT and supports free markets and dismantling the welfare state, but on morality they remain "anything goes". I have seen plenty of FReepers with this stance here, and on places like Rapture Ready Messageboard I have met Christians who "hold their nose" to vote for Bush as they disagree with everything with American political conservatism except abortions and gay marriage issues.