A wealthy young Republican donor and former member of the "Young Eagles" -- a program that is supposed to make the GOP fun again, or something -- said in reaction to Bondagegate:

Everything that's cool from a pop culture perspective is Democratic, whether it's Kanye West or Bruce Springsteen . . .

I'm reminded suddenly of Freddie's recent Wunderkammer article:

To call the Burkean insight a project or mission would be, I suppose, exactly wrong. But however we might want to frame it, it is clear that Burkeanism has failed utterly to maintain a hold on the communal imagination of movement conservatism. Convinced of the necessity of imprinting the conservative brand onto even the most elementary of human experiences, conservatives have come to look for ideological status (and thus ideological battle) in the narrowest crevices of day-to-day life. This has led to the sprawling industry of providing "conservative alternatives," in the realm of commodities or media, to conservative people. It is now entirely easy for someone to consume only conservative-oriented media at every level: conservative magazines, conservative radio, conservative television and news, conservative websites. Broader still, there are conservative dating services, conservative coffee houses, conservative colleges, conservative financial services, conservative rock music, a conservative YouTube....Often explicit, always obvious, these conservative-situated alternatives send the inescapable message: there is no end to the political; all of human life is a part of an endless ideological struggle; nothing is to be considered free from the quest for conservative purity.

I can't even imagine considering Kanye West in political terms, yet those on the mainstream right seem more and more committed to viewing everything through the crude filter of ideology. Think of how often you hear conservatives lament "art for art's sake," just like the old time reds. The vulgarization of conservatism is intimately related to conservatives' vulgarization of life itself; to their pathetic inability to distinguish and appreciate the various modes of human existence.