My favorite Republicans

From this point onward, I must forbid anyone at this site or elsewhere from lumping all Republicans into the category of country-club-hopping, sheet-wearing, cross-burning, environmentalist-trashing, Jesus-Nazis who don’t read the Bible or anything else.  Because my sister and her husband, the ones we stayed with in Ohio (right, the swing state — THAT Ohio), were the nicest people in the world to me and Kam [AKA the Professor and the Pit Bull] while we were there.  Campaigning.  To defeat their candidate in the presidential election.

In fact, they invited us.

They have raised the bar for decent human behavior in our family, demonstrating what I would call Christian virtues, except that they were Jewish virtues long before they were popularized by that nice Jewish boy from Nazareth, and except that Kirsten and Mark are atheists. But you get my drift.

It started when I was being maligned this summer by email by a Jesus-Nazi after I publicly disagreed with the group email about Obama being the Antichrist.  Kirsten jumped in and defended me to the group.

Kirsten offered to us that, while she wasn’t voting for Obama, any of her relatives who wanted to campaign for him in Ohio were welcome to stay with her while they did.

I doubt I’d’ve offered that, but now I have to, because she raised the bar.

She offered to pick up Kam at the airport Halloween evening, and stocked up on cottage cheese and frozen blueberries and coffee for us to eat while we were there.

The night before Election Day, they cooked steaks ordered from Omaha for us and waited dinner until very late when we got home that night.  Mark ended up grilling them in the backyard in the dark.

On Election day, Mark offered Kamilla the use of his ancient Toyota, which was great.  Kam was able, on her breaks from poll-watching, to get stuff from the local 7-11, while I flushed out voters in a heavily Democratic neighborhood across town.  Priceless.

They both got up at four a.m. with us [“It’s exciting!” they said] and ran around finding Kam a thermos for her coffee. Mark ended up having to walk a mile to his polling place to vote.  And he did vote, but it wasn’t enough to put McCain over the top in Ohio.

When we got back about eleven on election night, they had gone to bed, but got up to watch McCain’s concession speech and Obama’s acceptance speech.   When we came in the front foor, we found a hand-drawn picture with the caption “Congratulations, Kam and Karah!”  It featured a picture of an elephant crying big hand-drawn tears.