Why I'm Not a Republican -- Reason #2005
This evening I got a phone call from a person who at first presented himself as taking a poll for what I thought was a national or neutral service. The guy didn't mention a connection with any particular candidate.
I don't usually answer these things, but something made me hang in with it.
As I live in Virginia, the poll had mostly to do with the Governor's race between Tim Kaine, the Democrat, and Jerry Kilgore, a Republican.
I'm afraid I answered somewhat rambunctiously, and it must've been clear within the first two or three questions that I'm a Liberal and that I always vote Democratic and that I intend to vote for Kaine. In fact, when he asked a question that had to do with how I felt about Kilgore, I said I didn't know anything about him except that he was a Republican and that, ipso facto, meant that he couldn't be a good guy.
Some might say that that's not being fair-minded, but I so rarely see Republicans do anything that I consider worthwhile that I feel my definition of them as being congenital bad guys holds up, till they show me something counter to that.
I was offended by the questions asking my religion and my race, and I skirted both, though ordinarily I don't. But other questions were interesting and I saw no drawback in answering them, and that plus inborn courtesy drove me to stick with the questioning till the end.
And it wasn't till just before he hung up that the guy informed me that he had taken this poll for the Kilgore Committee.
What does this mean? Was he an uninterested party, just doing this for the committee to make some money, in which case he was indirectly informing me of the irony of my answers, or was he an adherent of that committee, in which case he could have thrown that info in my face with a great deal of glee, thinking how he had pulled one over on me in light of how much I had clearly opposed his side.
Regardless the thing that he really did was to confirm my distaste for Republicans, and to verify that this was just another of their dirty tricks, for which they had become so famed during Watergate and in numerous elections. Because for sure, if I had known beforehand that the poll was being taken on Kilgore's behalf instead of by some neutral party, I would have refrained from answering the poll.
It left me also with this uneasy question. Given the also proven Republican taste for vindictiveness, is it possible that they will try to come after me in some harmful way?
Naw, I'm trying to think. As I also told them my age, 74, they might just conclude that I'm just a cranky old hopeless backwoods curmudgeon whom no one would listen to and therefore would not be worth the trouble -- all of which is true, but in the climate of anger and fear that that party has created for decades now, I find it easy to wonder.
I don't usually answer these things, but something made me hang in with it.
As I live in Virginia, the poll had mostly to do with the Governor's race between Tim Kaine, the Democrat, and Jerry Kilgore, a Republican.
I'm afraid I answered somewhat rambunctiously, and it must've been clear within the first two or three questions that I'm a Liberal and that I always vote Democratic and that I intend to vote for Kaine. In fact, when he asked a question that had to do with how I felt about Kilgore, I said I didn't know anything about him except that he was a Republican and that, ipso facto, meant that he couldn't be a good guy.
Some might say that that's not being fair-minded, but I so rarely see Republicans do anything that I consider worthwhile that I feel my definition of them as being congenital bad guys holds up, till they show me something counter to that.
I was offended by the questions asking my religion and my race, and I skirted both, though ordinarily I don't. But other questions were interesting and I saw no drawback in answering them, and that plus inborn courtesy drove me to stick with the questioning till the end.
And it wasn't till just before he hung up that the guy informed me that he had taken this poll for the Kilgore Committee.
What does this mean? Was he an uninterested party, just doing this for the committee to make some money, in which case he was indirectly informing me of the irony of my answers, or was he an adherent of that committee, in which case he could have thrown that info in my face with a great deal of glee, thinking how he had pulled one over on me in light of how much I had clearly opposed his side.
Regardless the thing that he really did was to confirm my distaste for Republicans, and to verify that this was just another of their dirty tricks, for which they had become so famed during Watergate and in numerous elections. Because for sure, if I had known beforehand that the poll was being taken on Kilgore's behalf instead of by some neutral party, I would have refrained from answering the poll.
It left me also with this uneasy question. Given the also proven Republican taste for vindictiveness, is it possible that they will try to come after me in some harmful way?
Naw, I'm trying to think. As I also told them my age, 74, they might just conclude that I'm just a cranky old hopeless backwoods curmudgeon whom no one would listen to and therefore would not be worth the trouble -- all of which is true, but in the climate of anger and fear that that party has created for decades now, I find it easy to wonder.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 8:17 PM
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