As I've gotten older, I've gotten more liberal, and my father is increasingly conservative. It's so shocking to me because I always thought we had the same politics. The day I realized we voted for different presidents, I practically fell out of my chair.
And it turns out that tribes, not money, not factories, that can change our world, that can change politics, that can align large numbers of people. Not because you force them to do something against their will. But because they wanted to connect.
I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics.
I think Karl Rove saw that in George W. Bush early on and understood the impact that he could have on Texas politics and probably on national politics.
On the other side, I do believe that the rhetoric we are seeing from the Democrats today is unprecedented, is a new low in presidential politics and goes beyond political discourse and amounts to political hate speech.
