Late Friday afternoon, as I was wrapping up my day, a coworker of mine came in briefly to pick up something. "Lee" works in a different office and I deal with him once every couple of weeks or so. He's an ex-Marine, a talker, and a very nice man. But given his background, occasional bits of idle chatter, and other clues, I'd concluded that he was a pretty hardcore Republican, so I'd always avoided political talk with him.
He started the small talk -- "So, Buzz, got any big weekend plans?" -- and then, out of the blue...
..."My Republican Party is going to get killed this fall. And they're going to deserve it."
I wondered if somehow he'd picked up in the past that I was the house non-wingnut. Maybe he'd seen me emerging from my car with the "Be A Citizen, Not A Subject" bumpersticker. But I didn't care. I half-expected him to go on and complain that Bush "wasn't conservative enough" or something, but that's not where he went. Lee basically blasted the "corruption" that had soaked the Republican Party, and said, incredibly, that the Democrats were the ones to clean it up. Then he went on about the deficit, cited Bill Clinton as "far more fiscally responsible that this bunch", and even found a few nice things to say about Jimmy Carter ("he got a bum rap -- when the Soviets went into Afghanistan, he got VERY tough on defense, supporting the B-2 bomber"; "he had the right idea about energy").
Lee then spoke of his admiration for Reagan and Bush I -- the collapse of communism resonates very strongly with the Cold War generation, and one should not begrudge them that, even if they might be a bit misguided about where the credit should fall. But he called Bush II a "useless idiot".
He went into the economy. That's when it got REALLY interesting. I mentioned how neither of us (we're both in our forties) had ever really had to endure a massive economic catastrophe on the scale of the Depression -- the economy has gone through some rough spots in our lifetimes, but overall life's been pretty good to both of us. I mentioned that we COULD be on the verge of a massive currency collapse, as the godless Chinese commies pretty much held our financial future in their hands. That pushed Lee's right buttons -- he went on about how we could have allowed this to happen. We talked about gold and Australian dollars...
Then we drifted off into world geopolitics. I mentioned an odd little theory of mine -- that in the wake of the next major world war, the next superpower could very well be Brazil, if they ever figure out how to run an economy. They'd be geographically removed from most of the fighting, they've got a large population and immense natural resources, they're a reasonably well-educated country, and they've made decent progress towards energy independence. I said that Brazil could very well find itself in the lofty, privileged position that the US enjoyed after the end of World War II.
So Lee asked me, "Well, maybe, but what WOULD be the next big war?" I was kind of surprised to hear that, so I told him, "You know, Iran. If Bush attacks Iran, can you see the demons that would unleash? Such a war COULD bring down the whole northern hemisphere."
He looked at me, "No Way. Bush isn't THAT dumb to attack Iran. That would be a MASSIVE, MASSIVE disaster for the country and the world. No way he'll do that." He must have sensed my quizzical look, because he then quickly remarked, "Hey, just because I'm a Republican and a Marine doesn't mean I'm a warmonger!" I simply replied, "I hope there are enough cool heads in Washington who think the way you do. Our nation depends on that."
Lee praised Barry Goldwater. I told him that this wasn't Goldwater's party anymore; in fact, he'd been all but kicked to the curb by the neocon crowd for insisting that the government has no business poking in people's bedrooms. He hadn't been aware of that, but Lee's disillusionment with the pugs went up another notch.
Then Lee said, "Well, the Dems will probably want to raise my taxes, but I can probably live with that if it helps fix things." I told him that his taxes probably wouldn't go up too much, if at all, but didn't push the point.
Oh, immigration? It never came up.
Just a data point I thought I'd share. The lesson I think we should draw from here are, (a) voters don't fit into neat little boxes, and (b) Americans are DYING for some leadership that will steer us AWAY from the direction the Republicans are taking us.
There is one political party that COULD provide such leadership. The party of Roosevelt, Kennedy, Clinton, and Feingold.
Does that party WANT to lead? Is it up to the task?
The voters are there. They just want something to vote FOR.