All the world's a liberal, or at least it seems that way. For a country supposedly divided right down the middle, the Left sure does seem to be front and center in the news lately. From the oh-so-principled liberal Senators attempting to save us from the poor- and woman-hating John Roberts to the 100,000 plus moonbats marching in DC, the silent majority is awfully, uh, silent these days.

Fewer and fewer people approve of the President's performance. Of course, it's not all about Iraq or even about any inadequate federal reaction to Hurricane Katrina. More than a few conservatives, myself included, are fed up with the new breed of spend and spend Republicans, as epitomized by George W. Bush.

But every time I flirt with throwing my support behind a can't-win Independent or even making a protest vote to punish the party, the Left does something to pull me back into the fold. This weekend it was the every-cause-under-the-sun socialist America-hatingathon in DC. I look at those people and I know I can never stand on the same side of the aisle as them. In fact, I'll vote Republican just to spite them.

But why should my choice be between socially conservative/fiscally liberal Republicans and a bunch of crackpots? I call on rational Democrats to condemn them. Seriously. Where are the Dems saying that they don't support those who claim that 9/11 was an inside job? Or that capitalism is the root of all evil? Or even those who would deny Israel's right to exist? Do principled Democrats really want to share the tent with those folks? I hope they don't anymore than I want to be associated with the likes of freaks like Fred Phelps and blood and guts Pro-lifers.

I originally started this post intending to bitch about the knee-jerk demonization of Republicans I routinely find even at non-political websites like Television Without Pity. I found this post about a contestant, James (not our James of course ;-), in a forum about Big Brother:

Ugh. I know, but I choose to block that from my mind. How could someone so snarky and fun be such a .... Republican?

Seriously. I try to selectively block out that retarded, annoying, and ignorant picture he has of G.W. on his MySpace profile -- the very MySpace profile that got him picked to be on the show. His profile does bug me in general though, Republican weirdness aside.

It ticked me off that people make comments like that in a non-political arena and just assume that everyone is like them and agrees with their political viewpoint. All the world's a liberal. But then, honestly, I realized I'd probably have the same reaction to someone who was all gung-ho about Howard Dean. Mind you, I wouldn't be so rude as to post about it on some TV forum, but I'd think it.

And that's the problem. For every rude liberal who thinks all Republican are evil there's a conservative who thinks all Democrats are like Cindy Sheehan or Ward Churchill.

I feel like debates in America are taking place on the absolute fringes now (Is Bush Hitler? Is Hillary, indeed, the Devil?). We're so busy mocking and getting into shouting matches with the wingnuts and the moonbats respectively that we're forgetting that the vast middle of Americans, regardless of party affiliation, want a country where they can raise a family in peace, make an honest wage and mind their own business. Wouldn't our time be better spent figuring out how to best make that happen?

Campus women want to "take back the night". 9/11 families want to "take back the Memorial". Maybe the rational Democrats and Republicans need to band together and rally to take back the middle.

Update: Eric the Viking Pundit has a great post on kind of the same subject:

Here’s NY Times columnist David Brooks on “Meet the Press”:

You look across the party and you see some Democrats who really are working on policy ideas. I think of John Edwards, Steny Hoyer, one of the House leaders who had a foreign policy document come out this week. But most Democrats seem to be acting as if the main problem with the country is that the country doesn't hate George Bush enough. And if we only shout louder, they'll hate him more like tourists in Paris who think they'll understand us if we scream a little louder. And to me, it's led to the brain death of the Democratic Party. I don't know where the party stands on Iraq. I don't know where it stands on entitlement spending. On issue after issue, I really don't know where that party stands.