Conservatives Hate the Soda Ban, but They Love Their Diet Coke

The notoriously oddball but actually pretty accurate surveyors at Public Policy Polling are out with another one of their headline-grabbing polls today, with questions set on "Food issues polarizing America" — you know, Chik-fil-A and such. But there is this actually relevant finding: Even though Republicans have made a big stink about liberals coming for their fatty food and soda, well, Republicans like their soda calorie-free, and they like Diet Coke way more than Democrats do. Among its 500 registered voters, PPP found that Republicans prefer diet soda by about 10 percent, actually:

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Okay, so soda preferences — whether you like your can with a helping of diabetes — are not exactly the stuff of political polls. But this one is sort of illuminating in a counter-intuitive way: Conservatives rail on Michelle Obama's taking her healthy-eating initiatives to every outlet possible, and they certainly don't like Michael Bloomberg, which offends haters of Big Government almost as much as it does lobbyists for Big Soda. Just yesterday, Michelle Malkin's Twitchy was harping on "Nanny Bloomberg" and his proposed ban on two-liter sodas getting delivered with pizzas. The staff there wrote:

Nanny Bloomberg knows best, you see. You poor dears can’t be trusted to make your own beverage decisions, for goodness sake! Nanny Bloomberg unveiled his plans to further deprive New Yorkers of some yummy eats (or drinks) last year.

(Even though she's become one of the country's foremost voices on healthy eating, the First Lady knows better than to come between an American and their soda and stayed away from the topic of a federal ban.)

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As PPP noted, 21 percent of Republicans don't even drink soda at all. So essentially there are conservatives fighting for drinks they're not even drinking. It's all about principle, we guess, which also helps to explain why Democrats prefer KFC to gay-marriage-bashing Chick-fil-A, even though anyone with tastebuds will tell you that's a debate that shouldn't even be close.