I just saw this in the crawl below the screen on Hardball. I apologize if anyone else has noted it, but did a search and found no discussion. This is a nice conversation to have however. How many wives of prominent politicians are breaking ranks with their husbands to support Barack Obama?
I had Hardball DVR'd and had to rewind to read the crawl in case I lost my mind. NO, I had not lost my mind. According to the FEC, Mrs. Chuck Hagel donated twice to the Obama campaign for a total of $500. Senator Hagel's Chief of Staff was quick to respond by sayng that Mrs. Hagel was an independant and free citizen who had the right to support any candidate.
While Hagel has been so critical of the Bush administration, and the rest of us are voting on whether we would accept him as VP, Secretary of Defense, or some other cabinet post, his wife has been busy letting her feelings be known, publicly.
Is this the beginning of a much larger groundswell of informed people in the government deciding there is a direction for this country to go that can be construed as positive and worthwhile, regardless of party affiliation?
It was fun a few moths ago to hear the split between Charlie Rangel and his wife, which I understand is fairly regular and might only have been news to me. But I didn't think that it was a small point that the middle-aged wife of a Clinton supporter was so vocal for Obama. Now we have a prominent Republican's wife. How many more are out there? Certainly in most instances the wives, while clearly making their own decisions, would have informed their husbands so they would be prepared for any possible backlash. Is this participation something we can read as a tacet approval?
If anyone knows of any other spouses that have been doing this, it might be nice for Kossacks to e-mail their politician counterparts in a vote of thanks. Thanks for proving change is possible. Is this not an example of how we start to change things, block by block, Democrat, by Republican..... just a thought.