strange bedfellows

Politics has long been considered a plural noun; its use with a singular verb is comparatively recent. A well-established variant of adversity makes strange bedfellows.

Party politics, like poverty, bring men ‘acquainted with strange bedfellows’.
[1839 P. Hone Diary 9 July (1927) I. 404]

The Doolittle raspberries have sprawled all over the strawberry-beds: so true is it that politics makes strange bed-fellows.
[1870 C. D. Warner My Summer in Garden (1871) 187]

Ashley Wilkes and I are mainly responsible. Platitudinously but truly, politics make strange bedfellows.
[1936 M. Mitchell Gone with Wind lviii.]

Even enemies have something in common. Statecraft produces strange bedfellows.
[1980 P. Van greenaway Dissident vii.]

Politics makes strange bedfellows, if Mr. Hyde will forgive the unforgivable but irresistible metaphor.
[1995 Washington Times 31 Mar. A4]

Related to: associates; politics

Bibliography of major proverb collections and works cited from modern editions is available here.

A peculiar alliance or combination, as in George and Arthur really are strange bedfellows, sharing the same job but totally different in their views. Although strictly speaking bedfellows are persons who share a bed, like husband and wife, the term has been used figuratively since the late 1400s. This particular idiom may have been invented by Shakespeare in The Tempest (2:2), "Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows." Today a common extension is politics makes strange bedfellows, meaning that politicians form peculiar associations so as to win more votes. A similar term is odd couple, a pair who share either housing or a business but are very different in most ways. This term gained currency with Neil Simon's Broadway play The Odd Couple and, even more, with the motion picture (1968) and subsequent television series based on it, contrasting housemates Felix and Oscar, one meticulously neat and obsessively punctual, the other extremely messy and casual.