New Free Dating

So when I tell you I never thought I would date a Republican, it’s not because I really contemplated it and made a specific decision. It’s because as long as I didn’t drive to Orange County, my chances of actually running into one felt slim to none. We live in a birds-of-a-feather type of country. So how did I get to here? How did I come to date a man who told me he “liked a lot of Mitt Romney’s ideas” and that he thought John Kerry wasn’t really a war hero and that cap and trade is a terrible system? At first I didn’t think it would be a big issue. I fell in love with someone who has many similar interests and a big generous heart and when he told me he was an Independent, I thought that was just something moderate Democrats said when being pretentious about how non-conformist they are. I didn’t realize I was dating someone who would spend every single Tuesday night glued to Wolf Blitzer’s analysis of another Republican primary. And to be frank, at this point, it’s making me freak out. I get mad at him just thinking about our past political discussions. I can’t date a Republican! What was I thinking? What if I have little Republican babies?

Naturally, he doesn’t think it’s a big deal. He keeps saying we can always find common ground. But I find myself angry with him for things that I expect to take for granted. He admitted to me that the word “liberal” for him had a bad connotation and that the word “conservative” did not. It’s hard to blame him when this is a common phenomena in our country now so that only 20% of the population identifies as liberal while 40% is willing to identify as conservative. I tell him this is a direct result of the vitriol that Fox News and Rush Limbough and Glen Beck have injected into our discourse and he shouldn’t buy into their demonizing of the left. But for my boyfriend, “liberal” means big government inefficiency. I’m normally a calm person, but when he said this, I was close to flipping out. How could he buy into all that? He’s a smart person, he reads reputable news sources. And yet, I continually find myself mad at him for buying into conservative propaganda.

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