This is long … sounds like a fairy tale -- but it happened just a few hours ago, and you might find it worth the read.
Tonight we had a dinner party at a friend's apartment in our complex. My wife, myself, our friend who invited us (she’s recently widowed, hubby was WWII vet), another gentleman who is an electrician, a lady-friend who is a nurse, and her acquaintance whom we found out, is a Democrat. (I should point out the rest of us are Republicans solidly behind W. Bill, the electrician, whom we knew was stopping by our local Republican HQ, also brought along some BC04 bumper stickers, small stickers, and small yard signs for us (extra ones for us LOL) and a few of his friends.
At the pre-dinner wine and getting-to-know-you time, MSNBC was on showing the program you are referring to. During the Kerry section, due to my visceral dislike of the individual, I was neither shy nor restrained in my denunciations of that charlatan. The nurse’s friend began to take umbrage at my pronouncements and we got into a rather heated discussion concerning you-know-who. Our hostess was busy between the kitchen, and us but she chimed in from time to time.
Due to a well-cued visual “hint” from my dearest, I decided to sit down, sip the wine, and let a few of the others calm things down a bit. Our dinnertime, which should have been about 6-ish, got delayed to about 8PM. During this time a very informative discussion was had with the Democrat lady (I’ll call her Sue).
I had my opportunity to lay out, generally, my past in the protest movement of the late 60s and early 70s. How I was against the war but eventually, when the “group” I was with decided to lambaste the returning military, that that was the time I drew the line and changed my radical thinking as to what was behind all those protest movements – and I found out things I did not believe in or condone. (so much for my being a sheep). What killed it for me was the impetus Kerry and his clan put behind calling our valiant warriors baby killers, rapists, etc ( you know the routine by now). Also, tossing urine, cr@p, and other things at returning Vets was reprehensible to me. Also his involvement in Paris, his record in the Senate, his kow towing to the N. Vietnamese, etc. I spoke of family friends of my Mother's whose son was a POW and how she told me about his recounting (when he would talk a bit about it) as to how Fonda's, Kerry's and "that damn bunch of turncoat so-called veterans and protesters (my Mom's words)" were used against POWs. Next …
The nurse chimed in about all of the Kerry health care “plans” and such. She gave a good background of “Hillary Care” and where we would wind up with socialized medicine.
The Electrician was great in his assessments of all the loony “societal” plans the left is famous for foisting on us; from “political correctness” to government handouts, and keeping the poor oppressed so that the “Party” would keep their relevance. [I should mention that a few of us are voratious readers of FR! Good education here. Also, we brought up references to the Swifties and gave her links to here and there.]
We all had a very calm discussion (finally) leading to dinner. Things calmed down and issues were discussed in a very rational manner.
Long ‘n short. Not much was said during dinner. Following dinner, we were to watch some Halloween movie on some cable channel, but wound up in a continuation of the pre-dinner political conversation.
Sue’s cell went off, and it was time to pick up her teens from some party they were at. She had to call them back because our discussion lasted another 40, or so, minutes. THEN she excused herself, repaired to the kitchen, and made a couple more phone calls. (We found out about a couple of these later).
Time for Sue to go. Seeing I was close to the door, I opened it for her. She said goodbye to the others, and then by the door, she apologized for the rabid diatribe she leveled at me and W at the beginning of our discussion. I apologized also because I explained that I am usually quite level headed – but it was just seeing those scenes of medal tossing, Senate testifying, yadda yadda, that really got my blood boiling.
She left, I closed the door, and repaired to the table to add a splash to my glass and prepared to watch some drivel about gargoyles.
There was a knock on the door. We looked at each other … wondering … I opened the door, and there was Sue. She came in just inside the door and asked, apologetically, if she could have a couple of the BC04 tags and bumper stickers. Well of course! (I guess the first thing through our minds was the un-voiced idea that she was going to deface them in some way and put them up to be seen as a protest). OH WE OF LITTLE FATE! She mentioned that she made some calls earlier to her hubby, who was just now leaving work, to pick up the kids – because she had some people she just HAD to speak with tonight. She implied it was going to be a VERY long night for her.
Being curious souls, we repaired to the room overlooking the parking lot, and watched Sue clean a spot on her rear bumper and placed one bumper sticker there OVER HER KERRY/EDWARDS ONE!, and the other one at the bottom of her rear window. Then she went on her way …
So before all y’all’s get too heavy on that program tonight – it just brought in another vote for W in our little circle.
On a personal note: I wish all discussions would end like this -- perhaps this was our own little miracle for this election cycle. We are all still "up" about this experience.
{{pardon for grammatical and spelling errors ... a little high here and wanted to get the stuff posted. Hope you look beyond that to the reason I posted it.}}
Re #38: Wow, that's great! Personal testimony is a highly effective mind broadener.
Way to go!!
Twice as good as getting one from a new voter or an undecided.