Most republicans love coffee, or at least the idea of it. Coffee fits into that 1940’s image of the hard working American sitting down to breakfast with the family and, of course, a hot cup of joe. That’s why we call it joe. It stands for Joe six-pack, the average joe, and of course Joe the Plumber.

A great conversation starter with any republican is to talk about how you’re sick of this gosh dern fancy schmancy coffee that every place seems to be selling. Why can’t you just get a plain ol’ cup of coffee that doesn’t cost $4.50 and have a bunch of sissy whip cream on top? Talk about how you could make the same thing at your place with cool whip and Folgers.

Places like Starbucks are known hang-abouts for liberals who are probably writing their atheist manifestos on their stupid laptops. As a side point talk about how you’ve never cared for tea, especially the Asian ones like oolong and green tea (popular beverages in Red China).

Coffee has always come from foreign countries, but for god’s sake don’t advertise it.  Coffee comes from awful places like Columbia, the Middle East, and the most genocide-ridden parts of Africa. Why would you want to let your customers know that your product comes from a place like South America (try referring to it as the other America)?

Be careful though, you may eventually here that tricky question, “have you tried it?” However, if you’re prepared this can be a very fruitful opportunity. The best way to explain your venture to these borderline homosexual bathhouses is that your received a gift card. This can be from your liberal child, confused coworker, or you found it in the pew at your Protestant church.

Practice filling your voice with righteous right-wing contempt and begin your tale. Describe the Orwellian chrome and streamlined bar and display case full of scones. Scones just sound so French. You went up to the counter and talked to the hippy “barista” and asked for a plain ol’ cup of joe, but then she asked you, “what blend would you like?” What blend? The coffee blend. The regular stuff.  She finally got you to get some “Rwandan” coffee. You can share a chuckle with your friend about where Rwanda even is and whether they have welfare and too many taxes there too.

You finally had to choose your size and you ask for a large. “Grande or venti?” she asked. Spanish? Italian? I thought this was America. Your righteous indignation should swell dramatically here.

Your new republican friend should almost want to hug you now (in a non-gay way) because of how much he agrees with you. He’ll finally ask you, “well, how was it?” This can be answered with a simple shrug or for the more dramatic, “it tasted like shit.”

The first thing, really, that matters to any legal action is standing. For the sake of this article: I have none. I was born and raised in rural (no, I mean really rural) Michigan; I’ve never flown a confederate flag, although some of my high school classmates thought it went well on a pick-up truck. But, let me resign myself to this, I am a Republican; I am not a Virginian.

Governor Bob McDonnell

Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia has reinstated Confederate History Month. Say what you will, but that took some chutzpah for a man living in an increasingly partisan state, who also is seeking reelection this fall.

“What does he mean by Confederate History?” asks the curious political observer. Certainly, he was reminding folks that it was the (then radical) Republican party that reunited the Union; certainly, he must have been channeling the divisiveness of that conflict and its myriad socio-economic and racial undertones; certainly, he meant this to show that, while there were many things not to be proud of, Virginia was a state of rich history which they intended to celebrate in episodic commemorative months. Right?

Wrong.

The proclamation McDonnell proffered lacked any real mention of slavery. It gave no mention to April’s proximity to February (Black History Month). It desired no deeper reflection about the lessons of divisive partisanship and the use of wedge issues to win increasingly embittered demographics. This was a tactic, plain and simple. It was (forgive me, President Reagan) a Tea Party Tactic; a move designed to gain the support of an increasingly radical and decreasingly Republican voting bloc.

Courting a radical element is fine. Especially when they bring about moderation in any fashion. The voices of moderation often bequeath great wisdom to those willing to listen. But McDonnell has, as yet, shown no interest in reconciling a state that is already one of the most irreconcilable in the Union.

Friends and neighbors, I leave you with a thought. It’s not my thought. But the thinker has a similar name. Here it is: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.”

Rick Snyder, the GOP candidate for governor and Ann Arbor businessman, seems to be struggling with more than just weak name recognition. You may have seen an advertisement aired by the Rick for Michigan campaign during the Super Bowl – labeling him as “One Tough Nerd“. Now, last summer during the Mackinac Island conference and the huge initial GOP buildup to the primary season, he adopted a “Rick for Michigan” logo in which the preposition “for” was so small, it appeared as if his name was “Rick Michigan,” a potential miscalculation that has many prognosticators scratching their heads.  However, with the new year came a new rebranding for Rick Michigan, accompanied by the One Tough Nerd spot on Super Bowl Sunday.

I remember my dad often making jokes about people called pencil pushers, wearing something called a pocket protector and using mysterious tools known as slide rules. Even with the great value placed on the pursuit of learning in my family, there was a distinct generational attitude towards the stereotype of the nerd as a negative thing. I can’t speak to whether this was rooted in a 1960s grade school experience or a distaste for bureaucrats coming out of the Reagan years, but either way, older folks just don’t like nerds. The opposite seems to be true of millennials – especially in these uncertain times, both genders favor finding a mate who will be able to carry their own weight financially, and like it or not, that grants a certain advantage to nerds. Apathy is no longer trendy – and being involved and aware of what’s going on in the world requires involvement on several different platforms.

The gamble the Snyder camp seems to be making is that the Tough Nerd message will resonate with a wide swath of the population, but he faces a twin set of difficulties. First is that young people just don’t turn out to vote to the same degree that their older counterparts do, which will be compounded in an August primary. Furthermore, despite the relative unpopularity of the Democratic Party in Michigan today, the fact remains that young people (even or perhaps especially conservative ones) generally don’t like Republicans, and certainly not enough to go to all the trouble to support one candidate over another in a GOP primary.

So Rick Snyder, once considered the frontrunner, seems to be dealing with the age-old dilemma that the more people know about you, the less they like you. But this will only be an issue if he sticks with the One Tough Nerd meme even close to as long as he did with Rick Michigan.