Yeah, I've got a brother AND my mother who voted for Kerry so I AM sensitive to how we should 'react' now BUT...
I have great difficulty being "nice" to people that voted for the candidate endorsed by Usama Bin Laden.
I have no intention of being nice to these people.
Thank you. We needed that. One tends to lose the reasonable tone which sets us apart from the far left in the emotion of victory. It was fun for a day, but now its back to work! (With a sense of humor, of course!)
Being a Southerner that has been all over this country and being a very obvious conservative, I have noticed one thing about liberals.
They will ALWAYS equate courtesy with weakness.
Perhaps the most radical of the radical left will indeed follow through and get on the waiting list to move in with our beloved brothers in the great white north. Where they belong. There they'll be embraced in the welcoming open arms of socialism, just what they want. As for the rest, they just need their eyes opened, educated, or deprogrammed. That's a very hard task though when the oposition is always hard at work to shore up their lies and spread rankor.
We are being told to be nice and be quiet already. We have no need to sit back and be slandered for 4 years more. They can kiss my ass. They didn't work with us when we tried to be nice, so they can shove it.
Say it loud and say it proud. Then say it again.
The door's open for Democrats to rejoin America. But no lunatic fringes need apply.
Let's be civil but forceful, and those who also want civilization will follow, like the marriage amendments, although not all those people voted for Bush.
We have some power now, let's use it while we can, deal with the opposition that comes as we can, and move FORWARD.
Very clearly, you can't compromise with the far left, so it's quite pointless to include them. They want their "all" or nothing, so give them nothing. 2008 is closer than we think; we need real domestic successes so we can provide a clear choice to those centrists who were on the fence this time around. I assume Iraq will be a more peaceful place, so that shouldn't be an issue, but you never know what else can happen.
W has been "reaching out" to them since the very first day of his first term, and they have responded by becoming ever more vicious. I hope he is firm in his program and just ignores them this time around.
As for the average person, I have never been unpleasant to Democrats. They are always the ones who sweetly say things like, "oh, I thought you were too intelligent to be a Republican" (said by a fellow choir member), and then persist in following me around talking about it even when I told her that I was not there to discuss politics. It was the Dems, including some of these very same "sweet" people, mostly ladies in their 60s, who shoved us on the street or spat at us when we were distributing campaign material, etc. But I have never responded in kind, and most of the Republicans I know have not responded to their provocations, either.
So I don't think this requires a change in our behavior, because we are not the ones who are out of control and hysterical. I suppose we will just keep on not responding to their provocations over the next four years, because I can tell you, it is not the conservatives who are causing this atmosphere of hatred.