The Republican Heritage

One of my friends - a vicious Democrat - used to be, before I knew her, a Republican. That was many years ago. However, even though marriage exposed her to a different set of ideas – her husband also was a vicious Democrat – and pragmatism probably smoothed the way to her acceptance of those new ideas, she nevertheless retained a degree of respect and admiration for many of the members of the party that she had abandoned. In fact her husband readily shared that admiration and respect; it was just that he didn’t, nor did she, vote for those people.

I have always been on the shaky side politically speaking. I have not always, until recently, voted a straight Democratic ticket. But I have always been pretty much a believer in the Democratic Party. Like my friends, however, I always had respect and admiration for the Republican Party. I just didn’t very often vote for any of them.

The admiration and respect that I have alluded to, from all three of us had a lot to do with some names: Mark Hatfield, Nelson Rockefeller, John Lindsay, Tom McCall, Everett Dirksen, Dan Evans and William Buckley come immediately to mind. I know that there are many more, I just can’t remember them. But those names set a tone and tell a tale.

The tale is short: I can’t think of anyone in the current “just say no” crowd that would ever be mentioned in the same breath as those names. And the tone is the difference between a symphony and a cat fight.

And a new, but never-ending source of personal merriment is imagining a conversation – not a debate, just a simple conversation – between William Buckley and Sarah Palin.
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