The American people, a small slice of them, have spoken, and they are none too pleased.

The rest are yet to be heard, as the men who would be president march West, to caucuses today in Nevada, where the unemployment rate is 13 percent, and then to Colorado and Minnesota on Tuesday.

But let’s see whether we can make any sense of this rambunctious story, and what the Republicans and independents in the first four states that held contests have told us about their hopes and fears – and volatility, insurgency and populism – in an unsettled America.

For now, they are angry and anxious and uncertain.

Roller-coaster polls

This has been the most turbulent Republican presidential race in a generation. In a four-month span, four candidates have occupied the lead in national polls, boosted by a typhoon of super-PAC spending and sometimes twice-weekly episodes of a wildly popular new reality TV series, “Tonight’s Republican Presidential Debate.”

Candidates who might have been considered fringe in previous cycles, such as former pizza magnate Herman Cain, were lifted into the limelight before falling into disfavor among the public. For the first time, voters in the first three states to choose a candidate picked three different winners.

This is the work of an agitated electorate, fluctuating state by state in search of a candidate comfort they haven’t found.

In a South Carolina plump with social conservatives, Newt Gingrich received 41 percent of the votes of married women after he blew up at a debate moderator for inquiring about his personal life, which includes two affairs and two divorces. In Florida, 10 days later, he lost them, down to 28 percent.

What the voters keep telling us is that each state is its own special place, that conclusions are not yet possible, that they are still in a fickle state of mind.

Mitt Romney won 46 percent of the vote in Florida, where white snowbird retirees, exurb dwellers, Puerto Ricans and Cuban émigrés are said to most represent the diversity of the GOP in general. This made him the front-runner for, oh, the eighth time. But an unsettling 38 percent of those who voted for him indicated in exit polls that they would really like another candidate to enter the race.

Among the most affluent, the former Massachusetts governor beat his nearest rival by 40 percentage points in New Hampshire, 15 in South Carolina and 37 in Florida.

In each state, however, Gingrich consistently won the bulk of those who say that being a “true conservative” is the candidate quality that most matters to them. He also ran first among those who most strongly support the tea party movement.

Gingrich lives in a mansion in McLean, Va., made his millions not lobbying on K Street and shops at Tiffany, which might make him an odd choice for a crowd hoping to take over Washington by pitchfork. But he is the bomb thrower on Bain Capital, where Romney made his millions, and he refuses to dignify Barack Obama by putting the title “president” before his name.

Political DNA

This is not hypocritical, but perhaps a part of our democratic DNA. The inconsistencies between principles and behavior were there at the very founding of our nation, with Thomas Jefferson crafting the soaring insistence on liberty in the Declaration of Independence even as he kept 130 slaves at Monticello.

Picking a president spurs a conversation we have with ourselves every four years, about who we are and what kind of nation we aim to create. It’s not a frank conversation. It gets carried out in code, “social safety net” vs. “class warfare.”

The country’s two major political parties have long had their own bloody internal struggles. What seems most clear amid the volatility exhibited in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida is that Republicans remain locked in a crisis of identity and uncertainty.