A 2000 survey of members of Congress by the National Hot Dog Council found that 73% of Republican lawmakers preferred mustard to ketchup, as opposed to 47% of Democratic lawmakers.I guess I really am a Republican.
Seriously, though, I wonder what it is about Barack Obama that turns everyone that opposes him absolutely insane. Because it invariably happens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain--people both noted for sobriety and sanity before going against Obama--turned into complete basketcases once having to go up against the guy. Hillary seems to have shaped up well enough, but I guess the sheer extent of Obama's cool is daunting--the dude simply will not be rattled, he's charismatic, with an innate sense of the image he projects to the world. I get the sense that this comes from a deep well of self-knowledge and self-awareness, something that our previous president decidedly didn't have--in fact, aside from Reagan, I don't think too many modern presidents have had that sort of self-knowledge or inner strength. Maybe that's what fucked up both of their opponents so good.
In any event, the punk rockification of conservatism is nearly complete. I posited this theory some time back, but the idea is this: Johnny Rotten decided that rock 'n roll needed to be put out of its misery and set out to do that by upping the ante and creating music that was so uncompromising that anything less uncompromising would be considered selling out, but going further than Rotten would be too uncommercial. I don't know that it worked--in the end, it was rap and R&B that killed rock--but a similar dynamic is shaping up with respect to conservatives, albeit unintentional, in which shouting outlandish craziness is necessary to be heard above the din of Obama hatred, but said shouting merely pulls conservatism more outside the mainstream as others need to top each other. It truly is a vicious cycle. And it's not going to last forever--in fact, there's every indication that it's being ignored.
