Republicans are Punks!

Right-wing compatriot NC provides us with the news that punk rockers have now gone so counter-cultutre, they're supporting Bush. Or at least this guy is:

There is one tattooed, mohawked New Yorker who knows how to outrage the
punk scene: Nick Rizzuto - and he votes Republican.

"Conservative punk is not generally what people think of when they hear of
a punk," says Rizzuto. A smart, articulate 22-year-old, he founded the
Conservative Punk website six months ago, and has since received hate mail from
disgusted punks, excited phone calls from the Republican party and intrigued
coverage from the US media. To his critics he's a crank bringing punk's good
name into disrepute - but to his supporters he's the fearless voice of a
formerly silent minority.

...It's this frustration with the punk scene's liberal orthodoxy that fires
the conservative punks. "You could say we're anti-anti-establishment," says
Michale Graves, Conservative Punk columnist and frontman of Gotham Road. "I
think in American mainstream culture the cool thing to do now is to hate the
government and speak out against the war."

It's certainly easy to see how a Republican musician might feel like a
scorned minority. Johnny Ramone, punk's sole big-name Republican, became the
right-wing's answer to Michael Moore or the Dixie Chicks when the Ramones were
inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame two years ago, and he announced
from the podium: "God bless President Bush, and God bless America." The
right-wing website Free Republic recently attempted to out "conservative"
celebrities; its brief list of confirmed Republican musicians outside the
country-music scene comprises Ramone, anti-drugs/pro-NRA rock veteran Ted
Nugent, and actor/songwriter Vincent Gallo.

Rizzuto insists there are many more who are reluctant to make their
opinions public. "I'm very wary of mentioning these guys on the record,
especially in a European newspaper. They have to worry about being blacklisted
from playing certain clubs and from playing Europe altogether." This may sound
paranoid but Graves says his European tour was cancelled after the promoter read
a New York Times article about his politics.

...From a certain angle, punk's individualistic creed and
me-against-the-world rhetoric overlap with conservative values. "On some level
punk is inherently libertarian," says Greenwald. "You don't tell me what to do,
I won't tell you what to do, I'm just going to worry about myself." Follow that
logic and Bush's bullish approach to foreign policy - basically, screw what
anyone else says, I'll do what I like - seems quintessentially punk.

Such thinking is anathema to most punks. While Punkvoter's Rock Against
Bush CD can boast the likes of Offspring and Sum 41, Rizzuto concedes that the
few bands that support Conservative Punk, including Drawback, Style Over
Substance and Nation of Suspects, aren't exactly household names. But this
demographic, however small, is promising territory for Republicans. Right-wing
commentators have coined phrases such as "gonzo conservative" and "South Park
Republican" to describe young voters who like tattoos, swearing and Donald
Rumsfeld. Conservative Punk has already inspired sympathetic sites such as
GOPunk and Anti-Anti-Flag, and Rizzuto hopes to compile a benefit CD in aid of
Students for a Free Iran.

The best part is the section where Gotham Road's frontman mentions that his Euro tour was cancelled on account of his politics. If that ever happened here, people would be screaming to the high heavens and blaming John Ashcroft for it.