Overheard about town:

MAN NUMBER ONE (observing MAN NO.2 eating some kind of dessert item out of a Starbucks bag, good-naturedly inquires): “What is that? Like a $10 cake?”

MAN NUMBER TWO (taken aback, collects himself, and finally responds with a wry smile): “I’m a Republican, I can afford it.”

It was such a short and poignant exchange. Just a little light ribbing between two long-time acquaintances.

MAN NO.1 feels that Starbucks is a place to go to spend way too much money on coffee and cake. When he sees someone eating or drinking Starbucks products, he thinks “profligate spender” and can’t help declaring, however indirectly, his disapproval. He thereby seeks to establish his moral superiority and perhaps to edify his friend.

MAN NO.2 is put on the defensive. Here he is, caught eating overpriced cake. How can he explain himself? The answer presents itself. He, unlike his friend, has enough money to spend it on luxuries. But, how to put it so as to declare his own moral superiority? “I’m a Republican,” he says, “I can afford it.”

This short exchange brought out some of the shortcomings of people both on the left and on the right. On the left, it was the tendency to lecture people about their mundane choices. “You aren’t eating healthily.” “You aren’t being a good environmental steward.” “You aren’t being frugal.”

On the right, it was the idea that your wealth makes you immune from the moral choices that apply to everyone else. It was the idea that your political opponents only feel the way they do because they resent you for what you have. Frugality is for deadbeats.

With all the talk we hear from Republicans about budget deficits and government waste, we might be conditioned to think of them as frugal, but this psychology that connects wealth with morality is more important for understanding the conservative mind. Many of the wealthy self-identify as Republicans because “Republican” means that they are self-sufficient and don’t need anything from the government. “Republican” means they are a success, that they have “made it,” that they are respectable. Being a Democrat means pretty nearly the opposite. This is where that 47% talk from Mitt Romney was coming from.

Coming from New Jersey, these are the types of conservatives I am most intimately familiar with. I didn’t grow up around social conservatives or resentful middle class strivers. I grew up around bankers and lawyers and business executives who were Republicans because being a Republican signified that they were part of the elite. It was the same reason that people chose the Episcopalian Church over the Methodist one. It was about status.

These folks have made an alliance with social conservatives, largely from the South, but they have done so through gritted teeth. They have never had any respect for the social conservatives or for Southern culture, and they find it increasingly embarrassing to self-identify as Republican because it has come to mean that you are a religious fanatic or an economic illiterate or a science-denier or a homophobe or a racist or the kind of guy who thinks rape can’t cause pregnancy.

All that “elite” status is wearing off. The presumption of moral superiority has been reversed.

In these parts, we can still hear a man claim it’s okay for him to eat overpriced cake because he’s a Republican, but it no longer makes the same kind of sense that it once did. It’s gotten to the point in the Mid-Atlantic that the charge shifts from “why are you eating overpriced cake?” to “how the fuck can you be a Republican?”

Republicanism is no longer respectable. It no longer signifies status or moral superiority. Around here, it’s just a big question mark.