More Like This, Please. Maybe.

From an NYT letter responding to David Brooks's annual "The Republicans might want to rethink this whole rampant corruption thing" column:

I was a Republican once, before the party shifted to appease the extreme right and corporate America at the expense of the rest of the citizenry. I used to think that Barry Goldwater was right wing, but today he would be a moderate.

(snip)

It is high time that Republicans who remember and embrace the values of the party Mr. Brooks describes wake up and take stock of today's Republican Party. It is a shell of its former self - corrupt, incompetent, self-serving, partisan in the extreme and damaging to our country.

I always love to read stuff like this, and it's just amazing to me that Bush still has a 70-80% approval rating among Republicans, even if he's on "their team."

However, the question remains in my mind: Given the choice between a corrupt pseudo-conservative Republican candidate and a principled liberal Democratic one, which one would this presumptively honorable Republican vote for? Or would he just stay home?

Or, if you want to be really diabolical, are all of the "reasonable conservatives" just a trap, a honey pot to lure the Democrats into embracing ineffectual DLC centrism in the vain hope of picking up disaffected Republicans? It's certainly not a stretch to imagine that there are a lot of conservatives and Republicans who are disgusted with their current leadership, but it's also not a stretch to say that Rove & Co. are masters of dirty tricks and deceit.

My recommendation to the Democrats is: Take heart from testimonials such as this one, but don't count on anything more than a non-vote on Election Day. Let the Republicans worry about trying to be the new "honorable Republican party" - focus on trying to be the new "honorable Democratic party," and let the voters sort it out. These are potentially very good times to be a Democrat if you play your cards right (clear and forceful message, more Dean, less Shrum/Brazile), so please don't give up your advantage in a quixotic pursuit of possibly mythological disillusioned Republicans.