These are strange times.
In the past two days, the rec list has contained no less than three diaries pointing to some prominent Republican endorsing one of our two candidates. Everyone has by now seen the Ann Coulter clip so I won't bother to repost it here. If you've managed the stomach to sit through Joe Scarborough lately, you've more than likely seen something like this:
Even when they haven't been praising our own guys, they've kept themselves busy eating their own.
So all this has got me thinking: what's really going on here? Are we to believe that Ann Coulter really thinks Hillary Clinton is "stronger on terrorism than Mccain"? Does Nixon's former speech writer really find Obama "Burkean"?
I've come up with three possible explanations:
- The Republican really has, as Rush put it, fractured. The old factions are all backing different candidates and EVERYONE is trying to distance themselves from Bush. In the midst of this scramble, a few moderates are scrambling to align themselves with the democratic party in a desperate attempt to remain relevant. If this is the case, I'd say we stand a pretty good chance in November.
- Good ol' fashioned mischief. I started to get that sense when Karl Rove began to weigh in on the debates. Rove and Coulter are names that inspire pretty heated reactions from a lot of liberals (okay, let's be honest, being in their general vicinity is enough to give a newborn ulcers) and having them campaign for you could be a real kiss of death. It could be they're trying to stir the pot and encourage division within the party in order to seal a win in November.
- They're talking nice now, but when the election rolls around they'll suddenly remember where they put the keys to the smear machine and back Mccain all the way through the next 100 years in Iraq and beyond.
On a case by case basis, you could argue that all three are true. But 1 and 3 present us with a dilemna. Obama has spoken often about being open to disaffected Republicans but all these years of party war have brewed a lot of deep-running emotions. To say that progressives are suspicious of the Republican party would be like saying Paris Hilton "has an occasional need for attention." I'm sure a lot of people resent the idea of "rescuing" our "enemies", even if in the final count, they are sincere. If they aren't sincere, it spells trouble if Obama gets the nomination and the prophecied migration never comes.
I have no real concrete proclamation to make here, but I thought I'd put up a poll and see what everybody thinks: