Lifelong Republican

So, I was watching 60 Minutes this weekend, and there was an excellent report about coal mine safety and the lack thereof. At one point they interviewed a regulatory official and described her as a "lifelong Republican." Presumably this was to make it all the more shocking that she was in favor of better safety regulations in mines.

I'll bet you've heard that phrase before, "lifelong Republican." It is usually heard before it is explained that someone is against a certain military adventure, or when they think people shouldn't starve to death because they can't afford food. Think about it for a second. What is the implication of the phrase?

Is it that if you are a "lifelong Democrat" or simply a "lifelong non-douchebag" that your opinions carry less weight, because you only care about people being safe at work because you mindlessly subscribe to a leftist ideology. If you are a "lifelong Republican" who favors mine safety, well then maybe it really IS a reasonable position. Maybe people shouldn't be blown to pieces in preventable methane explosions! The Republican cares, it must be important!

The other possible reason for using this phrase (almost certainly not the intent of the journalist, but one which would entertain me) is that they are implying that despite the handicap of being a "lifelong Republican," the individual in question nevertheless came to the conclusion that human life is more important than maximizing profits. Bravo Lifelong Republican, you discovered a bit of humanity hiding in your middle pinkie knuckle!

Before the vast majority of Americans decided that invading Iraq was a worse idea than investing your retirement funds based on spam e-mail stock alerts, there was a similar phenomenon regarding prominent voices who had initially supported the war and later changed their mind. These people were the ones who were "level-headed." If someone had been against the invasion from the start (i.e. right 100% of the time) they were ignored, presumably because only loonie hippie liberals could have come to such a conclusion so early in the debacle. Those who were completely wrong at the start, but who later came to their senses, these were the voices of reason. They were rewarded for being wrong, because their initial wrongness meant that their later rightness was really right. If your rightness had been right all along, you must have been right for the wrong reasons. See, it makes perfect sense.