We're not, not entirely. I'm saying "actual real life republicans (like your mom)" have either bailed or are in denial. Robert Bork was '87, yo. When Bob Packwood says he is "convinced that Judge Bork . . . will do everything possible to cut and trim the liberties that the right of privacy protects" your "mainstream" Republicans are minority anachronisms. Before Nancy Reagan came out in favor of stem cell research, her husband embargoed that shit for 8 years. Then he proposed a constitutional amendment allowing prayer in schools.

The Republicans - like your mom - that are still hiding in their foxholes praying for a return to Buckley-era conservative thought are mostly in denial that the Democrats appropriated their platform long ago. The denial runs so deep that you're talking about voting for a member of the Keating Five. Meanwhile out in the world I've had to have the "death panel" discussion with people I like who still think Obama is a secret Muslim.

The people you're talking about are those so set in their ways they don't want to face the fact that their tribe hasn't given a fuck about them since the Iran hostage crisis. And that's where we disagree: nobody in the machine is going to wake up tomorrow and think "shit, we never should have listened to Grover Norquist!" It's all Taliban, all the time, and the people who know Barry Goldwater from something other than a history book are just the tail that the crazies know will vote for their cause until they die out of pure naked nostalgia.

The Koch brothers? Not Republicans. Libertarians. David fuckin ran for VP in 1980. Those caveats? Those are the party. Effectively, your mom's generation are saying "The one thing I'm not is a Democrat."