D.C. Has Those Lonely, Single Republican Wonks You Ordered

One of the only times a Seinfeld arc happened to me in real life was when I went out with someone who told me that he was conservative while I was in the middle of inhaling my spaghetti al funghi.

“Like how conservative?”

“Like fiscally.”

“What about abortion?”

“Uh-oh,” he said, and we’re married now! Just kidding, I had two more glasses of wine and never saw him again.

Being that Obama received a whopping 93% of Washington D.C.’s support back in 2008, it’s relatively unsurprising that right-leaning single people on the Hill have a hard time coming clean about their politics to potential love interests. The Huffington Post interviewed a few Republican singletons about their experiences in the D.C. dating scene, and it sounds kind of dire: even if they withhold their views from their online dating profiles (as you may have seen, some people actually clarify “No Republicans”) or abstain from hitting any hot-button issues on the first few dates, the old After Sex, Go Home and Google gets them every time. One guy, who goes by Tim in the piece, got dumped when his date found a right-wing op-ed he wrote.

“And J-Date is out of the question,” says Tim.

The conservative women interviewed seem open to dating across party lines (“”Primarily I’m looking for a heterosexual with a good sense of humor, and preferably not a lot of debt”) but it doesn’t happen thanks to their primarily Republican social circles. A 40-year-old female right-wing think tank fundraiser who goes by Shoshana says:

You really have to work harder than men in this town. I say that as a conservative, not at all as a radical feminist. I think that I have been pickier about who I have been willing to spend my time with… I think we use our time differently when you’re a woman working in conservative politics.

(Well, I mean, as long as you’re not a radical feminist, right?)

Michelle Jacoby, a matchmaker in D.C., says that it’s a shame that more bipartisan romances don’t happen just because people make assumptions about peoples’ personalities based on their political alignment. Look, as far as I’m concerned, just don’t hand Ayn Rand books out to your dates and you’ll be dandy.