The biggest non-Glenn Beck joke in American political circles goes thusly: When a male Democrat has an affair it’s with a woman, and when a Republican has an affair it’s with a man. (It’s homophobic in its own way—why do Republicans deserve ridicule for screwing other men?—but you get the point.) Recently, though, that's just not true. First there was John Ensign’s deafening silence, and then there was Mark Sanford’s inability to stop those torrents of sappy diarrhoea from dumping out his mouth-hole. Now we have their bunk buddy Chip Pickering’s bodice-ripping diary, and, juiciest of all, a 22-year-old intern and $10,000 in extortion money ensnaring Paul Stanley.

Smug American liberals are acting all mock-shocked that the GOP has rediscovered heterosexuality, and after Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Ted Haggard et al., it is a little surprising. Perhaps too surprising. So I’ll just put this out there: Sanford, Ensign & Co. probably didn’t have these affairs at all. They’re gay. These “revelations” are an elaborate conspiracy, part of the GOP’s desperate post-Obama rebranding, and they send a clear signal to the not-so-silent homophobic majority: Republicans are as straight as Slick Willy.

It’s probably going to work, too. Republicans have already convinced their constituents that more-expansive-less-expensive health care is a plot to harvest the elderly’s vitals; it’ll be easy enough for them to round up a few beards and stay in the closet. As we speak, the Heritage Foundation is likely cooking up a new Contract with America for next year’s midterms, with just one promise: “As Republican Members of the House of Representatives and as citizens seeking to join that body we propose not just to stop doing dudes, but even more important, to write erotic emails to Argentinean homewreckers and make amateur porn with interns, all of whom will be bona fide chicks with lady parts and everything.”