Reply #29: I wouldn't call this "singing the praises of our adversaries"....

[moriah]

She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help."

She's not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren't generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren't evaluated on their merits, but on the basis of who proposed them.

People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she.

Just my opinion here, but I think it does our party a disservice when we refuse to look at both the positive and negative aspects of our adversaries. If we fail to consider what others may feel are "positives", then we can't truly counter them. We have to understand what makes a person appealing to undecideds, so we can show negatives that may outweigh those "positives".

It's part of the reason I make it a point to talk to Republicans about politics. Just this morning I was talking to a lady I work with that is very conservative in many ways. We've become friends because she was born out in the boonies, less than 5 miles from where I lived in rural Arkansas. *Very* red county -- about 85% rednecks and 15% old hippies who have fortunately managed to get themselves on the school board so the kids there are actually learning evolution as well as how to keep from getting pregnant.

Not only did I get the chance to say "Check out Snopes.com" when she said that Obama refused to say the Pledge, I got to hear her favorite thing about Sarah -- pretty standard actually, she said that Sarah's beliefs about family values and the abortion issue.

Instead of pointing out that her daughter getting pregnant might not be the best demonstration of family values, I got to mention how she refused funding to support both Convent House *and* the Catholic Community Resources request for funding to assist in anti-abortion counseling and assistance with arranging adoption.

And that gave her pause for a second.