First of all, congratulations! Opportunities such as this come but once every four years. Sure, there are local elections in between but leave those minor controversies to the secondary market bands, the 1 p.m. at Warped Tour bands; you’re in the big leagues now. Whether it be a No-Hope racist lunatic like Trump or a delusional racist frump like every candidate not named "Jeb Bush," having a Republican candidate for president use one of your songs without permission is a musician’s golden ticket into the candy factory of fame and self-aggrandizement. If you play your cards right you could be playing golf with Billy Murray and Jenny Lewis at that middlebrow progressive country club of your dreams. Worst-case scenario: a Rolling Stone Blog post. Best Case Scenario? You open for Springsteen without having to hire Weinberg’s son first.
Once you’re done celebrating your good fortune, it’s time to get down to brass tacks. Are you going to allow them to use your song? Just kidding, of course you are not. Your song, vaguely freedom/America oriented as it may be, must not be used for non-Green Party/Clinton-in-a-pinch political purposes. Sure you all smoke cigarettes, eat meat, and last voted in a tour van show of hands as to who would be designated "Bongmaster General" for the evening, but, let’s be fair, you do own a bike. If politics is personal, call you "Mr. Personality!" And if politics is local, then you’re "for local." Both of these lines are pretty good and can be used in your press release to Rolling Stone, get that uncle money, but we’re just spit-balling here.
Now, the first thing to consider is: who exactly used your song? Hopefully they’re white. No disrespect to the Bobby Jindal’s, Ted Cruz’s or Dr. Ben Carson’s of the world, but having a conservative choose your song for their campaign should be a joyful, simple experience, untainted by nuance or a musician’s own complicity in systemic racism. You didn’t, excuse the term, slave away in that basement dragging those three chords together and soldering on plaintive odes to the working class joys of fucking in backseats and wheat fields, just to have your claims to easy solidarity stripped away from you by a Republican candidate so devious as to be darker than yourself, your label, and your entire fan base. Fuck that. Pray for Pataki.
Now, having Donald Trump using your song would be ideal. The press absolutely loves an easy target and, as apparently the mouth-breathing Reagan corpse-humpers who dominate Republican primaries do too, hell, he may be the candidate. End of Days indicators of that aside, a Short Fingered Vulgarian™ denouncing you for your stalwart refusal to let him use your music would be fantastic for your brand. You could play in front of the world’s largest Vitamin Water ad and still be considered Punk As Fuck™. If Donald Trump has picked your song, you don’t need advice from me, you will forever sit on the right hand of the Mighty One (or whoever is currently hosting "The Daily Show").
Failing the opportunity of Trump’s approbation, Scott Walker is an entirely desirable second choice. God willing, he hasn’t learned from the Dropkick Murphys fiasco…those lucky bastards. You too could go from being "that band with that song from that movie, no, Flogging Molly is a different band…" to being the Huffington Post pin-ups you were always meant to be. Should Scott Walker deign to crush the skull of a baby union deer while one of your songs plays in the background and you have the good sense to denounce him, it’s a sure bet that Zack De La Rocha will contribute a verse to your next single. (If he is still on your couch after a week or two, just tell him "No Spiritual Surrender" was where you think he really peaked and he’ll probably grab the last of the tofurkey and leave.)
Don’t hold out hope for Chris Christie. Ever since Springsteen gave him the brush-off, he listens to Gaslight Anthem exclusively.
Now, things get tricky with Jeb Bush, because Jeb Bush is going to be President of the United States for the next eight years, so let’s tread carefully. Speaking truth to power is all well and good, and potentially lucrative, but eight years is a long time and when/if there’s another terrorist attack, one of those classic white people killing ones, and the country goes back to not hating whoever the sitting president is, do you want to be the band with ten thousand unsold "I Miss The Cokehead Bush Who Did 9/11" baby doll t-shirts?
No, my friend, you do not. You. Do. Not.
The important thing to remember is, no matter whom the candidate who’s used your song, definitely against your will, your spam tweeting at his campaign manager notwithstanding, is…tell them that your mom and daddy were both schoolteachers in the mines of untenured Oberlin, and you’ll be damned if you sit idly by and watch the country that they…founded you guess? History was never your strong suit…anyway…You WON’T SIT IDLY BY and let big business or big pharma or whatever kill this most DIY of all of nature’s providence…America. Then tweet that. Then let the adulation wash over you like Rand Paul at a Reason Magazine tugger party.
You will have approximately one month before the Left turns you. But you know what? You probably saved the country and even if you didn’t, you can get a lot of Zooey Deschanel face time in one month. And I’m just going to assume you already play the ukulele.