I was trying to come up with something on Donald Trump apparently leading in polls for the Republican Presidential nomination, and read that he and Sarah Palin spoke at some tea party rally in Wisconsin over the weekend. This got me thinking about how the tea party has co-opted the “Don’t Tread on Me” rattlesnake flag from the American Revolution, so I began thinking about doing something with a snake charmer, when I realized snake handling would make a more appropriate (if not quite as immediately recognizable) metaphor, both because it usually involves rattlesnakes instead of cobras, and because it’s best-known for being practiced by religiously backwards hillbillies in the Deep South who think faith in Jesus essentially gives them magic powers.

While I think the illustration turned out quite well, here, I’m afraid I may have made it a bit too hard to read the metaphors with the more daring and dramatic composition, similar to problems I had with this cartoon.

What do you think, readers?