I was at a meeting last night where a wannabe governor introduced himself. He is a Democrat, running against Sean Parnell who became Alaska's governor when Sarah Palin resigned.

I talked at some length with a man who used to be a gung ho Republican. In the '80s he was an officer in the US military when it suddenly occurred to him that the message of 'Better Dead than Red' was ludicrous. He said last night that that's when he began to learn to think.

He is no longer a Republican. Although we agreed that in the *old* Republican party it was legitimate to vote for the occasional Republican politician, that is true no longer.