What does “It’s always a pig in a poke. So why not a pig who pokes?”mean?

Solution 1:

It is play on the old saying a pig in a poke that is something you buy without actually seeing what it really is.

A pig who pokes is a pig who:

• To thrust forward; appear: The child's head poked from under the blankets. (AHD)

So you know in advance who you are voting for.

The author is saying, whenever we vote for a President, we don't actually know who we are voting for (a pig in the poke) so why not a pig who pokes, a candidate who shows his real nature/intentions during their campaign rather than after being elected.

Solution 2:

It means: "Since you can never really tell what you're getting when you go to the polls, why NOT vote for a bad-mannered, bad-tempered, boorish person who throws personal insults at everyone who disagrees with him?"

The author is arguing that many people see casting a ballot as essentially a blind choice - like "buying a pig in a poke" - so the fact that a candidate behaves like a pig during the campaign may not be considered a disqualification by some voters.

Solution 3:

"Pig in a poke" meaning "something hidden" has already been answered. Another meaning of "poke" was a an type of women's bonnet, which hid the face from view. There are some 18th century cartoons here: http://mikerendell.com/a-pig-in-a-poke-an-eighteenth-century-view/

For "A pig who pokes", The "pig" part seems straightforward: "Why not a pig...." = "Why not somebody who behaves like a pig," or "who looks like a pig" (see Google images for lots of examples.)

There are several meanings of "poke" that are relevant as well as the literal one of "jab" or "prod":

"Poke a fire" = "cause something to blaze up" (e.g. "Trump poked the immigration fire")

"Poke around" or "Poke ones nose into" = "go searching for something", often used in the sense of "go looking for trouble."

"Take a poke at someone" = literally or metaphorically "hit someone", or "have sex with someone" (not necessarily with their consent).

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/poke

Solution 4:

A poke is a bag. When I worked on a hop-farm, the light hessian bags into which the hop-flowers were fed were called pokes. Oddly, the very large, densely-woven, tubular bags into which the dried flowers were pressed were called pockets, although you'd think that pocket was a diminutive of poke. So buying a pig in a poke was buying a pig in a bag, unseen. Perhaps small pigs were once carried to market in bags.

Solution 5:

The phrase "buying (or selling) a pig in a poke" refers to buying something you can't inspect and trusting that it really is as described. "You can't open the bag here, since the piglet might escape, but I promise that it's a healthy little one, definitely worth the price I'm asking for it."

Obviously, the seller may have been lying -- the thing in the bag might not even be a pig. Hence the phrase generally does imply a high (or at best unknown) probability of fraud. It's often used to describe vague political promises, for example.

"Why not a pig who pokes" is just wordplay based on this traditional phrase. To be sure if the intended meaning (if any), I'd need to see it in context.