Yes, I said it. Barack Obama loves Republicans. It seems that one of the main points floating around various corners of the blogosphere is that is that Barack Obama is not nearly partisan enough, that he is too interested in working with Republicans, etc. You know what? They're right.
Barack Obama does indeed love Republicans, as well he should - as much as we may not like to admit it, at least 40-45%, if not close to 50%, of the United States is constituted by registered Republicans and independents inclined to the Republican Party. There is no reason at all that we shouldn't be strongly reaching out to those individuals. What Barack Obama does so effectively, and what is overlooked in the rush of someone to judge his willingness of applaud bipartisanship, is that he is capable of distinguishing Republican voters from Republican leaders, which is exactly what we need to be doing.
Much as we often disapprove of our Democratic leadership, do we not think that such a phenomenon may not also extend to Republicans? While it is entirely possible, if not likely, that some of the disapproval of the current administration is coming from the far right, or has nothing to do with corruption or incompetence, I suspect that much of it has a lot to do with corruption and incompetence.
By and large, it is important to separate the GOP leadership, with the movement conservatives and neoconservatives who dominate the Republican Party, from their voters - that a lot, if not most, of the people who voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 are themselves probably not as terrible and corrupt and incompetent as George W. Bush, movement conservatives and neoconservatives - the ruling class of the Republican Party. I think that idea can be seen in a lot of the public opinion polls of presidential and congressional job performance.
In that regard, believe it or not, there are a few self-identified Democrats and independents who approve of Bush's performance - yet his approval rating remains in the high 20s. Assuming a rough national partisan breakdown of 40% Democratic, 35% Republican and 25% Independent (which I suspect is somewhat accurate, I hope for the sake of my point), even if every single Democrat and Independent disapproved of Bush's job performance, it doesn't account for every single person in total who disapprove of Bush. That means that there are a fair number of Republicans (at least 5-10% of the population as a whole) that disapprove of Bush.
Considering my earlier point, that there are a few self-identified Democrats and Independents (let's say another 5-10% of the total population) who actually do approve of Bush, that must mean that there are even more Republicans (probably another 5-10%) who disapprove of Bush, bringing us to a total of at least 10-20% of the country that are self-identified Republicans AND disapprove of Bush's job approval.
On the whole, my point is that a Democratic vote for a Democratic presidential candidate doesn't count any more than a Republican vote for a Democratic presidential candidate. While some many dispute the notion that Barack Obama is a viable progressive, and that is the reason he is attracting so much support from Republicans and independents, I strongly disagree. Barack Obama is a viable progressive, but one that reachs out to Republicans and allows them to become re-integrated into a government that they (much like Democrats) feel has abandoned them too.
So yes, I think Barack Obama loves Republicans as much as he loves Democrats, but only because many of them are decent people too. Many of them yearn for the same kind of true leadership we do - they are questioning where their current corrupt and incompetent leadership has led them, and whether the party that once represented them still does.
If a candidate is willing to say that he respects them, that he thinks that they can count too, that we have more in common than we might think - we just might get their votes (for a progressive agenda, no less), and only at the cost of recognizing that Republicans are people too, that they have no less of a stake in the future of our country than anyone else, and we embrace them as part of a broad coalition for change, a majority for a new citizen-powered future.
Just imagine if a Barack Obama candidacy could capture a net gain of just 2% on new voters, and a net gain of just 5% of individuals who voted for Bush in 2004 - that's 55% of the popular vote, plus putting Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, Virginia and Florida in the Democratic column.
The bottom line is this: let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater in our criticism of the Republican Party - this is a historic moment in which the right candidate can mobilize support from all political quarters of this country, and we cannot have a true mandate, a true majority for change until we fully come to this realization.