That's it, I'm calling you out. Yes, you.
I know the Republican Party has marginalized all of you and has used sleazy tactics to turn people against minorities, gays, and liberals.
Thing is, the Republican Party is not the sum and total of Republicans. We need Joe and Jane Republican on the street to like and vote for Obama, because Obama needs a mandate to truly fix the country the way we all know he can.
Bush-brand neocons, as currently championed by John Sydney McCain III are the ones we despise, not all Republicans. Swallow your pride and let's talk about this.
In another diary on MyDD I commented on the reasons for using the term "Republics" the same way Republican strategists use "Democrat party" is nonproductive:
1) It just doesn't work the same way as "democrat" does when slung by right-wingers. Linguistically, you're calling them "a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them" (according to Dictionary.com). Must we call our political opponents an individual nation unto themselves?
2) There are so many reasons to not respect the Republican philosophy as it's played out in recent years or individual Republicans, but disrespecting ALL Republicans by calling them names is not helpful: a lot of them are voting for Obama now, and we'd like to have more. Curious but open minded Republicans following a link to this site or MyDD or the like seeing that kind of thing may turn them off. Obama being the nice guy in the debate seems to have worked, right?
3) Who are you trying to convince here? We already consider "Republican" to be a dirty word (the same way the right thinks of "liberal"). Embellishing might be satisfying, but it's no more effective than just writing "Republican."
4) You're letting them frame the debate. Again. If we've descended to name-calling and disrespectful pet names for the other side, we're buying into the usual Rovian distraction game. Newsflash for you: Republican strategists want you to be extremely partisan so they can blame you for being "worse than Nazis" (thanks BillO). Don't rise to the bait.
5) If we're not better than them, what's the point of us winning in the first place?
This also to some extent goes for all the "McLame," "McSame," and "McBush" cracks; those have the added problem of annoying some proud Americans of Scottish ancestry who already get jokes about fast food restaurants with the noble suffix "Mc" (meaning "son of") to put up with. As far as he's fallen, the McCain family has served our country well in the military for generations; I'd rather not see another proud Scots-American family name go down as a punchline.
There's a rec-listed diary here about how deeply red Indiana may be in play because Obama may be making inroads with salt-of-the-earth Republicans who have been voting based on the same promises of values legislation and fiscal conservatism that Republicans have been promising for two decades at least, but never pushed through even when they were in control of the entire government. We need these people. They're good people who have been used and misinformed.
My aunt is a Bush-loving Republican. A 30%'er. We decided a couple Christmasses ago to not talk about politics for the sake of family unity, because to do otherwise is to get into a verbal brawl that ruins everyone's mood. I don't know how she's planning on voting this year, but I would be pretty sad if she started to make overatures towards voting Obama by going to a liberal site, just to see her party tarnished just like her party's partisans tarnish us.
Obama wants these voters. He wants people to look at the two candidates and judge them by their merits, knowing that he has the advantage in every major issue... but humans are communal creatures, and who wants to join a community where they're hated? Do we force people to change their party identification just to vote for Obama? That's been the Democratic strategy for two straight elections, the "with us or against us" mentality that Bush himself championed. While I care about party ID and downticket races, right now it's of critical importance that we get votes for Obama. I would consider it a victory if I got a dedicated red-stater to vote straight Republican downticket if it meant they voted for Barack Hussein Obama as president.
So we can be gracious hosts to our disenfranchised conservative brothers and sisters (and aunts and uncles and cousins and...), or we can fight the 50%+1 battle that we pretty much decided against in the primaries. Obama scored major points in the debates by being respectful and courteous even in the face of McCain's scorn. And me? I'm not going to be calling names any time soon. Except to Canadians. You hosers can take off, eh?