From My Moma to Obama

I was born into a deep-rooted, staunch Republican southern family.

Looking back, there were small signs that I wasn't going to be a good little Republican. Little things like, I became a vegetarian at 15. Growing up I didn't date boys that hunted. I drove fuel friendly cars and am friends with gay people. I'm not a fan of Western medicine and years ago I banned prescription drugs from my body. The signs were there all along the way.

The other tell-tell sign, my grandmother was a Democrat. Yes, if you read my blogs, this is the same woman who had a spare room with enough furniture to furnish another house, but that's beside the point. The point is, sometimes the Democratic gene is recessive, sometimes dominanat.

But what gave my family hope was a single photograph. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and this one was a thousand words of hope.

Me in college wearing a conservative blue and white polka-dotted dress standing in the glistening sun, grinning from ear to ear...and hugging Dan Quail. And this was Quail, pre-potato blunder. My parents saw my giant smile as "I'm a happy Republican," but really it was, "I just drove a governmental sedan 120 mph in a motorcade."

Out of politeness, I would straddle to political fence. I knew my views would conflict with popular opinion no matter where I was. I guess because of my roots, I'll always be republican sympathetic, no matter how I vote. And maybe, just maybe, deep down in my young southern soul, I knew both parties were flawed.

Tonight I went to a Barack Obama rally tonight in Washington Square park in NYC. Let me put it in perspective, I was in the most liberal city in the nation, in the west village, the most artsy liberal neighborhood, to hear a liberal candidate speak. You couldn't be at a more liberal place if you were weaving hemp bags on an organic farm with your tired henna stained hands.

So I was shocked when biggest cheers of the night came not when he spoke about fuel efficient cars or environmental reform or better schools or the dangers of big pharmaceutical companies, but when he spoke about free health care for all or affordable colleges and no student loans. Those were when the big cheers came.

I thought, "damn, y'all are acting like a bunch of Republicans!" Cheering about saving money... If he had said that voting for him would get everyone 50% off at Urban Outfitters, the crowd would have gone nuts.

At the end of his speech, he was saying something like “Do you wanna change the world?” And the crowd went nuts again like free iPhones were being handed out “Whooo-hooo, we wanna change the world!!!! Whooooo! We wanna change the world, Obama!”

I just shook my head. In order to change the world, you have to be willing to change yourself and it seems like few people on either side of the political fence are willing to do that. So, I left the Republicrats and came home.

Not only did I come to terms with the fact that I'm liberal, but I'm more liberal than liberals. Who knew?