What is a South Park Republican? You may have been following this all along; if not, here's Reynolds, Sullivan, Goldberg, Anderson (twice), and Stanton (also twice). Various others are linked in those articles. Read up.

Near as I can tell, "South Park Republican" is another of Andrew Sullivan's colorful coinages (like his "Eagles") to describe those who don't toe the party line -- particularly the GOP party line. Of course, this is no new trend. We always called them P.J. O'Rourke Republicans; or, as he would say, Republican Party Reptiles:

So, what I’d really like is a new label. And I’m sure there are a lot of people who feel the same way. We are the Republican Party Reptiles. We look like Republicans, and think like conservatives, but we drive a lot faster and keep vibrators and baby oil and a video camera behind the stack of sweaters on the bedroom closet shelf. I think our agenda is clear. We are opposed to: government spending, Kennedy kids, seat-belt laws, being a pussy about nuclear power, busing our children anywhere other than Yale, trailer courts near our vacation homes, Gary Hart, all tiny Third World countries that don’t have banking secrecy laws, aerobics, the U.N., taxation without tax loopholes, and jewelry on men. We are in favor of: guns, drugs, fast cars, free love (if our wives don’t find out), a sound dollar, cleaner environment (poor people should cut it out with the graffiti), a strong military with spiffy uniforms, Natassia Kinski, Star Wars (and anything else that scares the Russkies), and a firm stand on the Middle East (raze buildings, burn crops, plow the earth with salt, and sell the population into bondage).

In the end, though, is there anything to "South Park Republicanism" other than a glib name and some oversimplified political reasoning? After all, in a marketing age, everything is a brand, and it always needs a cute tag and some pop cultural cachet; but that doesn't imply that there's meat on the bone. In this case, I think the diversity of deviance makes the South Park segment less than a voting bloc, despite the cultural affinities. To give just one example, where would one stand on, say, abortion? If the unspoken fact is that South Park Republicans are Republicans with a wide pro-liberty streak, one could imagine that a certain libertarianism tempers the conservative heart in South Park -- and thus they would be pro-choice. Still, two of the most principled lower-case libertarians I've read (namely Balko and Hentoff) are unequivocally pro-life.

Okay, one more example: gay marriage. Sullivan would tell you that the South Park Republican is open to the idea of gay marriage, but I'm not so sure. I've heard some principled opposition to gay marriage from what I would consider generally South Park-ish types, the gist being that, while the economic and social benefits attendant to marriage should belong to all, it's silly to change the definition of the word marriage to include gays, and that such a change is akin to painting stripes on a horse and calling it a zebra. While I find that argument a bit overly semantic, I think it resonates with many anti-PC conservatives.