There is nothing to this story except my reflection on one former republican who has been lost by Republican incompetance and won over by the Democratic party.
As many of you know, we are in the middle of the Jewish New Year, Rosh HaShanah (most Jews celebrate it form sundown monday to sundown Tuesday although religious Jews celebrate the holiday today as well). For years in my family, that meant treking to parent's house and having the same political conversation with the same Republican family friend. I sensed in 2004 that things were starting to get different. But he really blew me away yesterday.
To give you some background, this family friend is very wealthy and has run for local office as a "republican" many times. (I put it in parenthesis because our local offices don't have R and D, they have things like the Progress for West _ Party). He voted for Bush in 2000, but in 2004 made a deal with his 3 daughters that he would vote for Kerry (which he did) if they would agree to vote for the Republican in a series of local elections. He can be a difficult man to debate although he is a wonderful, caring, giving individual (indeed, his own wife divorced him, they remained best friends, and recently realized it was silly to be divorced and got remarried).
I was shocked, truly shocked, last night when he just ripped into Republicans for their handling of the economy, McCain for his lies, and anyone and everyone who ever thought that Sarah Palin was qualified. Indeed, he told us all a story about how he asked the secretary at his chiropracters office to be his running mate because she had as much experience as Sarah Palin.
Now, I got an inkling in 2004 that this friend was moving this way. He was one of two people I knew personally who epitomized the view that he was still a Republican, butit was the Republicans who were no longer republicans. Still, his level of hatred for national republicans in 2004 was nothing compared to his invective yesterday. Whereas in 2004 he was an anti-bush, anti-republican voter (and thats why he voted for Kerry), he is now a bona-fide pro-Obama voter. Indeed, I told him a little about this concept of liberal libertarianism and he was genuinely interested. He said it sounded like I was describing Bill Maher, and he really likes Bill Maher.
By the end of the day, this formerly strongly aligned Republican voter said this "I am not really a party voter. I am a competancy voter. I am voting for Obama because he is competant and McCain and especially Palin are not competant." He is still voting Republican in local elections although he doesn't know how he will vote in his House election. The best part of the whole story is that while he used to vote in a North East state that will go to Obama anyway, for the first time this year, he is voting in his new home state...FLORIDA. Gotta love those snowbirds.
As everyone was packaging up their goodie bags of brisket and noodle kugel, I said to this friend's former wife/formerex-wife/current wife again, "I like your new husband better than your old husband." And this woman, who has always been a Democrat, said, "yeah, me too."