The NY Times is on a roll. First it was moderate and conservative Democrats, and now it’s the socially liberal Republicans:
“I am a Republican and have traditionally voted that way,” Tony Schuler, an operations services manager at Microsoft with a Harvard M.B.A., said as he sat with his wife, Deanna, in their home above Lake Sammamish. But Mr. Schuler abhors what he sees as a new Republican habit of meddling in private affairs.
“The Schiavo case. Tapping people without a warrant. Whether or not people are gay,” he said. “Let people be free! It’s not government’s job to interfere with those things.”
Since most of America can be found between these two articles, I’m getting a bit more hopeful about our future. I liked this, too, from Blondesense, who writes in Long Island:
Like Bellevue denizens, Republicans here embrace diversity, support stem cell research, are concerned about the national debt, believe scientists over politicians, are anti-abortion but want to keep the right to choose, want equal rights for gay people and want the government out of our bedrooms and off our phone lines. We’ll be seeing more centrist people voting for Democrats and it probably will impact the party. Then again, the party never could define itself anyway.
In the middle of that paragraph is something that requires some emphasis: a person can be anti-abortion and still feel as if other people retain the right to choose. That, right there, is the epitome of the middle ground; I don’t have to share her view about abortion (and I don’t) to be able to stand beside her politically.
And it’s time for all of us who feel that way to stand up and be counted.
It won’t be clear until November 8 whether people have gotten serious about pulling our politics out of the wings (and the government out of our bedrooms), or if things need to be even more broken before we’ll be ready to fix them.
Since Polimom thinks we’re about as broken as we can afford to get, I’m hoping the true heart of America is about to start beating again.