https://twitter.com/AlexKoppelman/status/441604933444304897
John Cassidy watched McConnell’s performance yesterday:
[W]hen you want to boost your bona fides with conservatives, many of whom regard you as a hopelessly compromised establishment figure, there’s still nothing like putting on your hunting jacket, grabbing your rifle, and paying homage to the N.R.A.
This being the Gaylord Convention Center rather than a rifle range or a field in Kentucky, McConnell went without the hunting jacket. His official purpose was to present a “lifetime achievement award”—that would be the rifle—from the National Rifle Association to Senator Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma senator who is retiring this year with a hundred-per-cent approval rating from the gun-rights lobby. McConnell handed Coburn the gun, they both admired it, and then McConnell delivered a lengthy attack on President Obama and the Democrats.
Paul Waldman is jealous that conservatives get all the cool props:
[C]onservatives have lots of these kinds of identity markers that can easily and quickly communicate a whole set of beliefs to an audience when they’re mentioned, like the Bible or Ayn Rand or country music.
The fact that Democrats don’t have these things is probably because their coalition is more diverse, made up of people with a variety of cultural backgrounds and life experiences. The markers that may unite certain portions of the Democratic coalition—like, say, the music of the recently departed Pete Seeger—are not anything close to universal within that coalition, so politicians can’t use them so easily.
Drum joins the conversation:
Conservatives have guns, pocket copies of the Constitution, and the Bible to use as really handy props that instantly demonstrate their tribal affiliation. So why don’t liberals have similar, universally-recognized totems? Waldman may be right that it’s because our coalition is more culturally diverse, but I’d toss out one other possibility: almost by definition, conservatives are in favor of tradition and liberals are in favor of change. So it’s easy to find simple conservative props because every culture has lots of recognizable traditional icons that it’s developed over the centuries. It’s a lot less easy to find liberal props because icons of progress change every decade or two.
The Dish 