Army Veteran, congressional candidate rejects GOP extremism, switches to Democrat

[4a6c1]

.

[kutter]

His feigned outrage at what are traditional political moves is hysterical. Did he rail against the Dems when they added pork to the CR giving hundreds of thousands of dollar's to the widow of one of the wealthiest senators amongst other things? He was just a RINO and is now showing his true colours.

He should be made to give back every penny he raised as a Repub and start over.

[Tgo01]

Everyone is wondering about the divide within the Republican party. Maybe a sign of things to come?

Everything is fine, calm down. People switch parties all the time.

[Taernath]

Everything is fine, calm down. People switch parties all the time.

It's totally different this time.

[zzentar]

Wait wut??? A party used super majority status to ramrod a law the public didn't want?

I see no correlation here at all.

~Zz

[Latrinsorm]

His feigned outrage at what are traditional political moves is hysterical. Did he rail against the Dems when they added pork to the CR giving hundreds of thousands of dollar's to the widow of one of the wealthiest senators amongst other things?

...why would he? He didn't list Republican pork as an issue, and it didn't seem like he was holding back.

[cwolff]

And he's not the only one.

Tom Ridge just dissed the far right when speaking to Log Cabin republicans, Charlie Crist has switched to the Democratic party (he got shunned for hugging Obama at an event in Florida), Chris Christie was called RINO for working with Obama 1 year ago and even his victory in NJ was met with a tepid GOP congratulations and two other republican (Karl Rove and former congressman Tourette) have PAC's aimed squarely at the Tea Baggers.

Finally we might see some common sense come back to the GOP.

[cwolff]

This guy really hits the nail on the head when describing what we're up against. The far right has gone too far and hopefully they've had a wake up call. The 2014 elections should be very interesting in determining who's going to control that side of the aisle.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...aidt-tea-party

As a self-described centrist, Haidt sometimes draws ire from the left for comments about how liberals don't understand their opponents, and about how conservatives have a broader range of moral emotions. But he certainly doesn't claim that when it comes to political animosity and the polarization that we now live under, both sides are equally to blame. "The rage on the Republican side is stronger, the Republicans have gotten much more extreme than the Democrats have," Haidt says.

The data on polarization are as clear as they are disturbing. Overall, feelings of warmth towards members of the opposite party are at terrifying lows, and Congress is perhaps more polarized than it has been in the entire period following the Civil War:

But this situation isn't the result of parallel changes on both sides of the aisle. "The Democrats, the number of centrists has shrunk a bit, the number of conservative Democrats has shrunk a bit, but it's not that dramatic, and the Democratic party, certainly in Congress, is a mix of centrists, moderately liberal and very liberal people," says Haidt. "Whereas the Republicans went from being overwhelmingly centrist in the '50s and '60s, to having almost no centrists," Haidt says.

And of course, the extremes are the most morally driven, the most intense.

From the centrist perspective, Haidt recently tweeted that "I hope the Republican party breaks up and a new party forms based on growth, not austerity or the past."

[Gelston]

Changing parties is nothing new, especially for people running for office. He is just trying to get free publicity.

[Latrinsorm]

Haidt? or... Hadit? al-Hadith???