I have a lot of respect and appreciation for Pete Abel, who writes for The Moderate Voice, but I’m afraid I don’t quite get the point he’s trying to make in this post he published today.

You see, Pete is a lifetime Republican but intends to vote for Barack Obama November 4. There are more Republicans who do that, as Pete knows, and he decided to talk to some of his more conservative friends about his choice for Obama. He sent them an e-mail informing them about his choice and received responses all of which seemingly made Pete quite sad, although I wouldn’t know why.

Of the three responses, only one was clearly over the top. The other two were reasonable and calm; one can disagree with them - I do on some points for instance - but they were not ‘way out there’ and they would not cause me to ask Pete, as he put it, how these people can be his friends.

Unless one’s normal friends always agree with one, of course, two of the three responses were normal, he should have expected them.

For instance, lets take a look at the first response:

It just so happened I got an article from the Investors Business Daily emailed to me about the same time I got your email.

Although it was about Carter and the things he did that arguably led to our (and the worlds’) current problems in Iran and in the economy because he was naive and weak, it is a reminder of where our current problems germinated. As Margaret Thatcher said- ‘I could not help liking the man but he had no business being president’ . We could be saying the same thing about Obama in a few years.

The corrupt and unaccountable UN will be empowered by him as well as the liberal ideologues which will dominate the Supreme Court and rewrite the constitution from the bench to fit their ideology, which may not matter anyway since we will be subservient to the UN rules and taxes. The opposing point of view will be muffled by the equal time laws Nancy Pelosi is already pushing for, supported by her other left wing friends.

If Obama was president instead of Bush, we would be out of Iraq- we never would have gone there, they would have completed their nuclear weapons and other WMD programs by now, no telling what they would have done with them, particularly to the people who made him look bad over the last 10 years…

If the middle east is a peaceful place in 20 years, history will likely show the stability began with the introduction of democracy via the Iraq war, not with the Jimmy Carter starry-eyed dreams that unleashed a monster in Iran that has terrorized the middle east with Hezbollah, Hamas, Quds and others since Carter empowered them with his ineptitude.

If you vote for him you vote to empower Nancy Pelosi’s left wing ideology, which is way too similar to Obamas.

The second response:

Funny, exactly what I said to Pete earlier. Think Jimmy Carter when you make that vote. My recollection is that he had crossover support as well…he was an unknown.

No, one can disagree with the above - the comparison between Obama and Carter, or the view on the Iraq War, Carter and Iran, and so on - but they are not insane or rude, or aggressive, or what have you. They are simply friends who disagree with Pete’s take on Obama and who, unlike Pete, believe that, for instance, associations do matter and that a hawkish foreign policy serves America’s interests better than a dovish one.

Again, you can disagree with that, but there’s absolutely no reason to be offended or shocked by their responses. This is what friends do, this is how they can disagree with each other. And there’s nothing strange about it.

As such, Pete’s response to their e-mails: “After reading their replies, those of you who have likewise decided to vote for Obama might wonder how I can consider these men my friends. It’s simple, really: When I follow the advice of the omnipresent and amorphous ‘they’ and avoid discussing politics, I find these guys to be decent and delightful souls. They are, all of them, loving fathers. They are also selfless givers of their time and talents to worthwhile causes. I defend them, not their words, for the same reason Obama defended the person of Rev. Wright without defending his remarks: What my friends say is not the sum of who they are.”

Is extremely strange. No one in his or her right mind would wonder why these people, the first two at least, the third is a different subject, can be Pete’s friends. No one.

Except, of course, those who believe that all the criticism of Obama is dishonest, false, and mean, and that not supporting him is a sign of ‘unreasonableness.’ The rest of the world, though, don’t find the e-mails shocking at all, but merely a political disagreement between friends, who all seem quite capable of expressing themselves well.

Strange post, not sure what to make of it.