Sorry, we thought he was George Washington.

For whatever reason, the far right contingent of the GOP seems to have this ongoing fetish for choosing unlikely ideologues like the Duck Dynasty family to be pop-culture champions of their cause. Only to once again realize that their "Ben Franklins" turned out to be more a group of "Mel Gibsons" leaving the party embarrassed and having to step back to allow the more sensible modern conservatives to once again bail them out. 

I never found the Duck Dynasty family intriguing for even a moment. Nonetheless their show became a nationwide hit and they became unofficial spokespeople of the religious right wing of the GOP. 

The lesson NEVER learned here is that when you surround yourself with people like the Robertsons and their peers, you will find mostly decent people that use the Bible and Christianity as a basis to treat others with equal dignity and respect as was intended.  However one must remember that this same culture of God fearing Southern Christians has its own share of detractors in our society that view them as uncivilized rubes. Their daily activities are continuously probed for isolated incidences in order to find justification for their own discriminatory beliefs. (A common practice of all bigots) The very moment they spot a few rotten apples in the mix that manipulate various scripture in order to make some non-mainstream jabs at homosexuality, they pounce. 

Why does the GOP never see this coming? Despite the fact that today more than ever, the mainstream beliefs across both parties are predominantly accepting of alternative lifestyles and the remaining bigotry is peppered fairly lightly across both parties, the Republicans will always take the disproportionately larger beating for it. 

This is because the Left has better damage control in these situations and also has the full cooperation of the mainstream media, happily driving the get-away car when abandoning their "Alec Baldwins" at the curb. Meanwhile the Republicans are caught with their camouflage pants around their ankles desperately latching on to those they have designated as cultural icons without doing proper background checks first. 

Remember GOP, the Democrats are not pointing their fingers at you this time. They are pointed firmly at Phil Robertson. But keep hugging and kissing him in defense of his freedom of speech, and they soon will.