Just looking at the American flag can make you a Republican?

Oh-my-gawd, now do we not only have a potential president Rick Perry who will rule by faith over reason, and doesn't believe in science, evolution, or climate change, we have a drift of the populace towards the republican base of his support by subtle nudges of the sort documented by Carter et al. Simple exposure to the American flag leads to a shift towards Republican beliefs:

There is scant evidence that incidental cues in the environment significantly alter people’s political judgments and behavior in a durable way. We report that a brief exposure to the American flag led to a shift toward Republican beliefs, attitudes, and voting behavior among both Republican and Democratic participants, despite their overwhelming belief that exposure to the flag would not influence their behavior. In Experiment 1, which was conducted online during the 2008 U.S. presidential election, a single exposure to an American flag resulted in a significant increase in participants’ Republican voting intentions, voting behavior, political beliefs, and implicit and explicit attitudes, with some effects lasting 8 months after the exposure to the prime. In Experiment 2, we replicated the findings more than a year into the current Democratic presidential term. These results constitute the first evidence that nonconscious priming effects from exposure to a national flag can bias the citizenry toward one political party and can have considerable durability.