For many of us, Thanksgiving weekend meant seeing family. Because I am one of the extremely few conservatives in both the wife's family and my own, discussions that turned to politics became interesting. None of these conversations were particularly long or involved, but some of them provided some insight that I was not expecting.
Truth be told, I was not spoiling for a fight or really looking for political conversation. But if the topic came up, I would gladly engage. With an uncle the topic of Occupy Wall Street came up. Because I know him to be center-right I thought I was safe to express my utter contempt for the Occupy movement. Surprisingly, I was wrong. My citation of certain Limbaugh quotes about OWS didn't help things either. My uncle was much more sympathetic with OWS than I anticipated -- not their behavior, but their message -- and resented Rush "looking down his nose" at them.
Unfortunately, due to the craziness of the gathering and because dinner was about to be served, I didn't get the chance to follow up by determining exactly what message was being presumed. I had a feeling that this relative, no stranger to newspapers and current events, had formulated his opinions about OWS based on doctored and whitewashed media depictions.
Next, a liberal-Democrat relative asked me, "So, are you still on the Cain train, or is that over?" That was actually a valid question. True, I have not blogged about Herman Cain lately. As much as it pains me to say it, he has totally screwed up the past two debates (foreign policy and national security) as well as his defense against the sexual harassment allegations. If Cain were as serious as he promised, he would have prepared himself much better for those debates.
Let me state right here that, due to all his assets, Herman Cain is still my favorite candidate (along with Newt). But if he allows himself to get crushed by the relentless media smears, false accusations, and his own unpreparedness, it will have been his own fault.
This is basically what I told my questioner.
A third conversation I was simply a witness of, not a participant. A devout Jew declared out loud that from now on she's just voting on the topic of Israel. Good, I thought. Another vote for Obama lost.
Finally, the following exchange took place while enjoying the unseasonably mild weather outside with a Democrat relative whose spouse is among the most staunchly leftist (socialist even) in my family. When she started with the question, "So, don't tell me you like Sarah Palin and this Tea Party crap," I knew this was gonna get good.
I responded, "First of all, Sarah Palin isn't running for anything and secondly, I am a proud Tea Partier and it's not crap to want our nation to return to small, constitutionally limited government." Interestingly, she did agree with me that the Democrats had indeed made government way too massive and intrusive and that maybe she'd vote Republican next year, just for the hell of it. But then she said something about the rich and the poor and there needing to be more "fairness" and then said she's probably a socialist. I clarified that if she was really socialist then she would want government to get even bigger, not smaller.
Yes, she was all over the place. She really doesn't follow politics and basically just "goes with the flow." These are the people we have to get hold of. When "independent" minds listen to arguments, they should in theory side with conservatism.
Anyone else out there have family political discussions this past weekend that turned interesting?
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