How the GOP became the Party of Pizza

This afternoon’s story is brought to us by a combination of opinion pieces from Paul Krugman at the New York Times and the writers at Salon. (With that, I’ll give most of you a chance to hit the back button and move on to the next story.)

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Now, for the few dozen of you who are left reading this, have you ever heard of the disparity in political contributions made by major pizza companies? As it turns out, unlike business owners in other industries who hedge their bets by donating generously to both parties during each election cycle, the big pizza guys tend to donate almost exclusively to Republicans. Little Caesar’s comes in on the low end of GOP contributors from the pizza lobby at 73% of their donations, while Pizza Hut goes pretty much all in at 99% Republican support. Domino’s kicked in nearly 1/2 million to the GOP last cycle while Democrats saw a paltry $27K.

So why was that? Krugman offers a dizzying, partisan analysis. You see… pizza people are just evil.

Pizza partisanship, then, sounds like a joke, but it isn’t. It is, instead, a case study in the toxic mix of big money, blind ideology, and popular prejudices that is making America ever less governable.

I know… that sounds like something out of the Onion. But it’s not. He actually published that in the Paper of Record. And Salon (as it should go without saying) has to crank the heat up by several orders of magnitude.

Republicans have allied with the food industry to oppose encouraging companies to offer healthier options and to fight labeling requirements. (The GOP may be the party of the free market, but it’s not so keen on free and informed choice within it.)

Given that obesity and conditions like heart disease entail large social costs, there’s more at stake in these fights than an individual’s waistline. But don’t count on Republicans to be moved by such concerns; Krugman concludes reflexive ideology and an aversion to empiricism blind the party.

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Clearly the pizza people hate science, America and puppies, though not in that order. What else could explain their aversion to donating to Democrats? Oh, let us count the ways.

In reality, the pizza magnates have absolutely zero reason to love the Democrats. They push “healthy food initiatives” such as the measures endorsed by the First Lady which operate on the assumption that pretty much everything on a pizza is bad for you. Cheese, the flesh of dead animals, fat, bread… it’s all destructive and against the wishes of nature. Of course, these are also the food pyramid of most of the things which actually make food taste good. Clearly it must be abolished.

Then there’s the issue of wages. If you sling pizza for a living or deliver it to customers at their homes, you have a job which probably doesn’t pay much above the minimum wage. (Actually, drivers can make a pretty good wage on tips if they do their job well. I know a few of them.) This means that The Man is Holding You Down since anyone with a paycheck should be making twenty bucks an hour according to liberal doctrine. Never mind how much that would make your pizza cost when it arrives at the door.

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There’s really nothing shocking here. The pizza industry has no reason to support the Democrats, since pretty much everything they stand for is detrimental to their business. Is that “evil” in modern political parlance? Clearly it is, so go enjoy the cheesy goodness of evil this weekend, my friends. Just don’t eat your pizza with a knife and fork. If you do, you should move to Chicago.

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