Texas Republicans for Obama

Got this e-mail from a reader in the Dallas suburbs:

Just some anecdotal information as Tuesday approaches. Both of my parents and brother, all of whom are staunch Republicans, voted early on Friday and they all voted for Barack Obama. I am an enthusiastic supporter of Obama and true, I'd been working on them for months but I never really expected them to actually vote for him. I'm sure this is happening all over the state. Republicans who have never (and may never again) voted in the Democratic primary crossing over to vote for someone they can at least palette over a figure they cannot stand. As the polls continue to indicate that the race is close between likely Democratic voters, I suspect it's not even close among crossover Republicans, and the record turnout in early voting suggests that there are a lot of them.

For the record, both the male Dreher children are firmly in the Obama camp. We were driving home from church today and I pointed out a Hillary sign.

"Look Matthew," I said, teasingly. "It's a sign for your girlfriend Hillary."

Lucas jumped in quickly. "Hillary Clinton?"

(And I thought: he's freaking four; how the heck does he know that?)

Then Lucas turned to Matthew and said, "Let's look for a sign from your brother Barack Obama."

This evening we turned on the TV to watch "60 Minutes," and Obama's face appeared on the screen. In the same instant, two little boys on my living room floor screamed:

"BARACK OBAMA!"

Why is Barack Obama a rock star to my children? Seriously. We don't talk politics really around the kids, so I don't know where they're picking this up. Julie told me some fellow conservative Republican friends at church have the same situation with their five-year-old son. Kids these days! Heh.

UPDATE: It occurred to me this morning that I stood on our green naugahyde couch one cold afternoon in November, 1972, and commanded my parents to make sure they voted that day for Richard Nixon. I was five. My folks were not political, but this was a matter of utmost urgency to me, for some reason. Somehow I absorbed a crude political sense at that young age. Eight years later, I had a Man on the Street photo column for our local newspaper. I had the worst-ever column during the 1980 Democratic convention, when Carter and Kennedy got into a nasty scrap over delegate rules (that is, whether or not the delegates Carter won in the primary would be "open" to switching to Teddy K. at the convention). I was mesmerized by it, and asked the good citizens of St. Francisville, La., to declare themselves on the burning question of the week: "Should the Democratic convention be an open or closed convention?" It didn't go over well. If you give a nerd a camera and a notepad, these things happen.