It’s like the Neil Young/Skynyrd feud of the early 70s except with dreary Senate soundbites instead of country-fried classic rock. In hindsight, maybe Dan Gilgoff was right: Vitter’s salute to “core conservative values” would seem to encompass social conservatism, which, needless to say, is ironic coming from him. Even so, what he says at the end about The One’s domestic agenda erasing regional differences among right-wingers is undeniably true. The more Hopenchange focuses on remaking America as a command-and-control economy, the more focused Republicans are on fiscal conservatism and the less important the northern/southern cultural divide is. In fact, I’m surprised Obama hasn’t already reversed himself on gay marriage just to try to drive a wedge between libertarians and social cons. Presumably he thinks the chance of it backfiring by alienating centrists is too great, especially with the GOP momentarily powerless in the minority, but I’ll be curious to see whether he changes his mind next year if there’s a red wave in the midterms and he’s suddenly forced to take many more political risks. Click the image to listen.