We are agreeing left and right ;-) The extremism among both legislators and voters is not healthy. One of the reasons I was so excited about Obama was I thought it might lead to more congeniality. That sure hasn't happened, has it? The Republicans seem to have taken the position of being against anything he wants to do (just as most Democrats were against anything Bush wanted to do). IMO we are in about the same state we were in at the time of the Civil War, only the lines are ideological rather than geographic.

I do think there are more centrists in the population than in Washington. We are certainly seeing that in the health care debate. And the House is much, much more polarized than the Senate.

As a general rule I would rather suggest solutions than just bi*ch but I have no idea what the answer is here.

>I know a lot (really, I mean the word a LOT) of ex-Republicans who switched to Libertarian or independent (no party affiliation) over the past 8 years. I don't know many (maybe 2-3) who switched to the Democrat party though. I think the extremes on both sides (Repub and Dem) have turned people off both parties because I know quite a few Dems who have dropped out of that party as well and they haven't moved to the Republican party either, but chose to be non-affiliated.
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>>Crazy she's not. She may not be as conservative as you would like.
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>>Believe it or not, there used to be a fair number of moderate Republicans. Now they're practically an extinct species.
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>>>You would!<g> I think she's crazy.
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>>>>Olympia Snowe has become famous with her key role in the health care debate. She is interesting enough in that right. Her outlook fits that of the state of Maine, an independent state if there ever was one. She gets reelected by huge majorities and can vote her conscience.
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>>>>What I am surprised not to have seen mentioned is her husband. Not that I am attributing any of her success to him, because I am not. She is married to John (Jock) McKernan, the former two time Governor of Maine. That is the term limit. If Maine were Chicago he would have been reelected as many times as he liked.
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>>>>There happens to be a personal connection, well, of sort of. When I was a kid from about the age of 8 my greatest love was to be a basketball player. The NBA was not much at that time so it wasn't that, just to be a really good basketball player. Most of my childhool was spent in Bangor, an adyllic childhood. When you were 10 in Bangor, the guy you wanted to be was Jock McKernan. He was an all state basketball player, literally. There is a picture frozen in my memory, titled "Jock's Farewell." Bangor had been wiped out by Cony (79-50?). He was moving left across the basket, a move a tried to emulate hundreds of times.
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>>>>They both married well, didn't they? I admire both of them.