2) Years of lewrockwell.com and Chronicles Magazine and other paleoconservative or paleolibertarian publications unfurling the old Confederate banner have worn many people's patience to a frazzle. One either accepts that sort of thing and wants more or rejects it and loses interest or rejects it and turns violently against that vein of rebel nostalgia.
There's a contradiction between wanting to get back to the "Old Republic" and wanting to carve up the country. It can be reconciled by people in their own minds, but the contradiction is never wholly resolved.
3) It's similar with talk of the American empire in paleoconservative media. One can be very much against unthinking interventionism and attempts to reconstruct the world, but things look differently after 9/11. We've found out that we are much more a part of modern America than we might have thought a decade ago, and Gore Vidal doesn't look like any sort of a model.
Paleoconservatism looked new and interesting a decade ago. I can't imagine it has much appeal now.