Frank Rich has a great op-ed today at the New York Times about "South Park Conservatives" . According to Rich:
Emboldened by the supposed "moral values" landslide on Election Day, the faith-based right became the new left....Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone, true to their butt-out libertarianism, [have] aimed their fire at self-righteous, big-government conservatives who have become every bit as high-handed and meddlesome as any Prius-pushing movie star. Such is this role reversal that the same TV show celebrated by Mr. Anderson and his cohort as the leading edge of a potential conservative victory in the culture wars now looks like a harbinger of an anti-conservative backlash instead.In the March 30 episode, Kenny, a kid whose periodic death is a "South Park" ritual, lands in a hospital in a "persistent vegetative state" and is fed through a tube. The last page of his living will is missing. Demonstrators and media hordes descend. Though heavenly angels decree that "God intended Kenny to die" rather than be "kept alive artificially," they are thwarted by Satan, whose demonic aide advises him to "do what we always do - use the Republicans." Soon demagogic Republican politicians are spewing sound bites ("Removing the feeding tube is murder") scripted in Hell. But as in the Schiavo case, they don't prevail. Kenny is allowed to die in peace once his missing final wish is found: "If I should ever be in a vegetative state and kept alive on life support, please for the love of God don't ever show me in that condition on national television."
Satan and his demonic aides "us[ing] the Republicans?" Demonstrators and media hordes? "Demagogic Republican politicians... spewing sound bites" Does Frank Rich want to come write for RaisingKaine? (Please, Mr. Rich, we NEED you here in Virginia! LOL) Or how about one of the Americans who believe, by a 55%-40% margin in a USAToday poll, that "Republicans, traditionally the party of limited government, are 'trying to use the federal government to interfere with the private lives of most Americans' on moral values?"
As Frank Rich points out, "what Hillary Clinton's overreaching big-government health care plan did to the Democrats a decade ago is the whammy the Schiavo case has inflicted on the G.O.P. today."
I love it: Democrats as the party of personal liberty/leave-people-alone/limited government party and Republicans as the "nanny state/meddle-in-your-private-affairs/big government" bunch. Almost makes me want to be a "South Park Conservative" too!