Tea Party Chooses Rooster as its Animal Symbol

With the Tea Party gaining momentum after the latest mid-term elections, leaders of the up and comers decided it was time to start looking and acting like a bona fide third party by choosing an animal symbol their followers could relate to in the upcoming 2012 elections. The Democrats use the donkey as their symbol. The Republicans use an elephant. And now the Tea Party will be using the rooster.

Last month, the Tea Party sent out a poll to their followers to choose an animal symbol that best represented what they stood for. Among the choices were a bear, a badger, a tiger, and a bulldog. A special box for write-ins was also provided.

This past week, leaders of the party gathered the responses to the poll and were surprised at the overwhelming choice of a write-in animal. A rooster. While the bear ran a good race, supposedly due to Sarah Palin’s ‘mamma grizzly’ rhetoric, and the badger, because of his notable perseverance, ran a close third, the tiger and bulldog didn’t fare as well. Additional comments showed poll participants were smart enough to realize that the tiger isn’t a domestic animal and the bulldog was eliminated altogether because it was the English variety and not a common red-nosed pit bull.

The rooster response was quite a surprise. Some Libertarians weren’t even sure if a rooster was an animal. They claim it is more like a bird. They wondered if a bird was noble enough to represent their party. However, after realizing the symbol of the United States is a bald eagle, they put two and two together and determined that a rooster was just as much a bird as an eagle regardless of whether or not it was an animal and left it at that.

The party leaders aren’t exactly sure why the rooster got so many votes, but several theories emerged. For one, a rooster is considered one of the cockiest animals (or birds depending on whom you ask) alive. And no one can argue that the Tea Party candidates, especially Rand Paul, are considered quite cocky. But the leaders believe it was more than a cockiness trait that got the rooster nominated. They say it was probably due to the popularity of cock fighting, especially in the southern states, to settle scores. Most Libertarians regard a rooster as one of the bravest animals on the planet that will fight for a cause to the death whether they do it willingly or not.

“When you put it in that context,” said Cogburn Leghorn, Tea Party leader from Arkansas, “we couldn’t have picked a better symbol for our party. Not only are we stubborn, but we sure as hell like a good fight.”

Asked if a rooster was nothing more than a male chicken, and most people associate chickens with chicken-like behavior, Leghorn had this to say, “That’s just plum nuts. Now go away, boy, you’re a botherin’ me.”