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Although racism is a plank of the modern-day GOP platform, not all of them have drunk that particular Kool-Aid. I'll never forget watching Obama give a speech in downstate Illinois a couple of years ago, with former (GOP) Illinois governor Jim Edgar sitting onstage watching him with a look on his face that could only be described as fatherly. Obama's appeal to a narrow slice of Republicans surprises me not at all. Remember that Illinois in particular has a strong tradition of moderate,socially progressive GOP governors (e.g. George Ryan's death penalty moratorium). As the quintessential "qualified minority"-- Ivy-League college, Harvard Law (as is his wife), President of Harvard Law Review--Barack has been able to garner support from all sorts of unlikely quarters. The University of Chicago, which is the Anti-Berkeley, has never stopped begging Barack to join their faculty since he taught there. At the risk of sliding into the "some of my best friends" cliche, the fraught partisanship of the last eight years has us all demonizing the political "other". While I still believe that GWB supporters are mouth-breathers, I know for a fact there are others in the GOP who still have their wits about them and are appalled at the state of their party and politics in general.
