identity politics

From Sadly, No!:

The organizing principle behind right-wing rhetoric is simple human spite: The political ideology of its rhetoricians is that somewhere in America, at all times, someone is stealing their parking spot or taking the last jelly donut, and someday there'll be hell to pay. Someday, as it were, a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets.

The Spite Caucus isn't particular about its methods. The more that 'liberals' revere, for instance, the Bill of Rights, the more they attack it under one pretense or another, but ultimately for that reason alone. It gives them the joy that a jerky twelve-year-old gets from jumping up and down on another kid's sand castle. . .

I was discussing something similar with the Evil Cat of Hell a few weeks ago; that right wingers tend to oppose or support people and organizations more than the ideas espoused by people and organizations. Sen. Clinton could be calling for privatizating the school system, health care savings accounts, and bombing Iran back to the stone age, and the usual pack of braying hyenas on the right would still invent droll puns on her name and call her a Socialist simply because she is Sen. Clinton, and a Democrat.

Which isn't to say that this type of thing doesn't exist on the political left (who have their own set of silly and annoying tics), but this type sillines really is most noticible on the right.

Also, I recommend reading Sadly, No! on a daily basis. It's some of the sharpest polictal humor on the internets.