Knowing this, plus the fact that men with sisters also tend to be more conservative, makes me think Obama’s younger sister must be a full-on communist.

Fun fact: Jeb Bush is seven years younger than George W. Bush, the guy who signed TARP, increased the deficit, and tried to pass a massive immigration reform bill. Gulp.

“We suggest that differences in conservatism between firstborns and second-borns stem from different strategies of optimizing the parental resources children can gain in the family system,” study researcher Daniela Barni, a psychologist at the Catholic University of Milan in Italy, told Live Science…

In 1997, psychologist Frank Sulloway expanded on the theory in his book, “Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives” (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1997). Sulloway suggested that firstborns are used to being dominant and prefer to uphold the status quo, while second-borns, looking for a unique niche to fill in their families, take a path of rebellion. Firstborns also stick to a conservative path in order to align themselves with their parents, Sulloway argued…

The results of this analysis partly supported Sulloway’s theories. Firstborn children were, indeed, more conservative on average. However, they were not more likely to be influenced by their parents’ levels of conservatism than their younger siblings, suggesting that older kids aren’t taking on a conservative personality in order to throw in their lot with Mom and Dad…

“Firstborns, having experienced the undivided attention and care of their parents, and being stronger and more intellectually developed than their younger siblings, occupy a dominant position,” she said. “Thus, they tend to safeguard their status advantage by developing conservative values helping them to uphold the status quo.”

Sulloway’s research also showed that first-born (i.e. more conservative) siblings tended to have higher IQs. Which means you’re now fully armed to approach your liberal friends and inform them that not only is their “enlightenment” merely an artifact of being whiny and deprived of attention in childhood, they’re also objectively dumber. They’ve got brains a third the size of ours. It’s science.

To illustrate the point, here’s Democratic Rep. Joe Garcia, who I’m guessing is a third- or maybe even fourth-born sibling. Exit question: Show of hands, commenters — how many of you growing up saw the “first-born conservative” phenomenon in your own homes? *Raises hand*