Riding along in my automobile this morning in northern Virginia, I approached a PT Cruiser that I saw, from a distance, proudly wore a lovely BUSH-CHENEY '04 sticker on its ass. As usual upon seeing such things, I restrained the urge to mutter a Cheney under my breath and instead quietly sighed.
Pulling closer, I saw the driver had one of those "UNITED WE STAND" license plates with an American flag on it. Well, that's nice. Plenty of those around here, especially so close to the Pentagon.
I then noticed that he had vanity plates, too. They read "GO ..." something. Three letters. UVA? UNC? UMD? Nope, not a requisite sports team.
"GO GOP!" read the license plate. Oh, and United We Stand, too.
Ironic, no? But should I have been surprised?
The secene served as a disquieting reminder that this attitude, folks, is what the Democrats are up against and have been for a long time, but especially since the dust settled from Sept. 11: A group of people (certainly not all Republicans, but quite a few) who hold their hand to their heart and say we're all in this together -- but wink wink, nudge nudge at the same time.
Certainly we saw it during the campaign, stuff like "We're all united in a strong war on terror...but oh, elect Kerry and we'll get attacked again!"
And you know, I bet if I had a license plate that said "United We Stand" and "GO DEMS," at a traffic light the nearest Republican would lean out his car window and accuse me of being unpatriotic.