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There've been quite a few cheesy lines from as a parade of presidential hopefuls took to the stage to display their wares. :

"In case you didn't hear the late-breaking news, the gold medal in the downhill was taken away from American Lindsey Vonn. It was determined that President Obama is going downhill faster than she is."

Pretty high on the cheese-o-metre.

But it was who went for the lactose intolerant vote.

He took a bash at elites who drink chablis and eat brie.

He is probably saving his best lines for 2011. Like French cheese, American politicians are at their best when about to run.

But what is it about the American right and cheese?

It was, I believe, the writer of The Simpsons who invented the sobriquet "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" for the French, but it was enthusiastically taken up by Republicans.

Tasty cheese, runny, smelly, even blue, is often used as a symbol of a revoltingly decadent taste, something far from the common people. That's rather the opposite of its image in France where this simple pleasure unites peasants and elite in both connoisseurship and dreams of a common rural idyll.

One wouldn't have thought that the robust individuals of the conservative movement would wilt before strong flavours. They don't sneer at BBQ beef or chilli peppers, after all.

I have always suspected it has become a symbol of the alien and the foreign simply out of embarrassment. Americans have many skills, but cheese making doesn't appear among them, as anyone who attempts to chew on rubbery orange cheddar can attest.

But I've just finished reading , a chapter in .

It profiles an American nun who became an expert in microbiology to make better cheese. It contends that Americans make fantastic cheese, which - it argues - can only be made like moonshine, in secret, and sold under the counter, because of ridiculously tight food regulations.

A ripe case for small government conservatives, I would have thought. The Tea Party is all very well, but what about the Cheese and Wine Party?

I am eager to hear from American conservatives who, while not having blue blood in their veins, like blue veins in their cheese.

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