I'm following Ender's lead here, because this isn't really front page material. Still, some of you might find this interesting:

No, this isn't going to be one of those diaries about how my Republican father has suddenly seen the light, nor will it be about how he repeats crazy FOX news talking points while my brother and I laugh and tear them to shreds. Instead, this is just a portrait of one guy who still considers himself a strongly conservative voter, faced with what he knows is a declining Republican party.

We talked for about a half hour, covering the Presidential campaigns and the situation in New Orleans. Here are a few of the more interesting points:

First, a little by way of background. My father's a conservative Catholic who considers the pro-life agenda one of the most important moral debates of our time (sidenote: he's also firmly anti-death penalty, for the same reasons, but considers that a lesser evil than abortion). Until I came out gay a few years ago, he didn't have much positive to say on that issue, either. Change is slow on that topic, but real: he ended our conversation by asking how my better half is doing, and try as he might, he can't help but like the guy.

But overall the roots of his conservativism run deep. He watches FOX news almost exclusively. He considers Bill O'Reilly one of the few sane men on the television. His radio has been tuned to Rush Limbaugh for as long as I can remember. Needless to say, when I'm home we tend to avoid political discussions.

That makes our phone conversation tonight doubly interesting, since he brought it up.

On the Presidential Campaign:

Here's the good news for Democrats: unless Fred Thompson enters and wins the Republican primary, my father is staying home on election day. He absolutely will not vote for Giuliani. He absolutely will not vote for McCain. Don't even ask about the rest of that shallow pool of candidates. And I get the feeling that many Republican voters are not unlike him.

He's unimpressed with anything the GOP is putting forward, but not unimpressed enough to make the switch to the Democrats, whom he considers traitors all around. Most of the Democrats he hates for the expected reasons (Edwards = slimy lawyer, Obama = insubstantial fluff, Clinton = the fourth horseman of the apocalypse), but it's telling that even his intense loathing of Clinton would not trump his inability to pull the lever for his own party.

I just want to highlight that point, because it seems a lot of people feel the exact same way.

Republicans have to know this. You can see from the near-silence at places like RedState and the lackluster excitement that Republican candidates are generating, even on FOX news, that they know this next election is as close to a lost cause as they've faced in years. By no means should that make those of us on the Left apathetic, but it's certainly a cause for guarded optimism.

And this is about the best I can hope for from him. I don't ever expect him to vote Democratic, because that would require so fundamental a shift in his value systems that he'd be near-unrecognizable. We may never see eye-to-eye on certain issues, but this is a good place to start.

On NOLA reconstruction:

A few surprises here, and a few non-surprises. First, he confirmed that New Orleans is facing a huge leadership deficit, first and foremost. Supplies are more expensive, but people aren't getting the aid they need to make up the difference. Fact is, he says, the people doing best are those 1. doing it on their own and 2. helping each other out. My aunt managed to get affordable doors and baseboards because her son-in-law had helped out the woodshop owner on another project, etc. There's a whole system of "I'll help you, and you can pay back the favor later" that allows everyday folk to skip past the pervasive bureaucratic incompetence.

Then he deviated a bit from this Norquistian fantasy to say, "Look, I understand that the government is necessary for a lot of projects. You can't expect people to have the equipment or the resources to build levees, for example."

That's damned right. Now I have to get him to start applying that understanding to other large-scale projects that individuals can't always control, like healthcare and education.

Unfortunately, the NOLA situation is driving him away: he'll be looking for another job soon. Even if the level of cynicism towards a city he never liked weren't enough, the multi-hour commute to see my mother on weekends is just too hard. I can't blame him for the latter, although I'm happy to say that I didn't inherit his intense dislike of our hometown. Right now, it's easier for people who dislike the place to see their worst fears confirmed: as if it weren't hard enough for people to rebuild on their own, they're finding their half-reconstructed homes raided and ripped late at night by people who sell the supplies for profit, like copper wire, etc.

I don't know what kind of person it takes to steal from someone who's already lost everything. I don't think I want to know. Add to that a major regional cocaine bust in town (and I'm sorry to say I'm acquainted with some of the people involved), and sometimes the demons of cynicism can be hard to battle off.

Still, I take what I can from this: some pride in the way locals are helping each other through the situation, and some lingering optimism that my father's death-grip on Republican talking points has become a little looser in the past year or so.

We'll see how things develop over the next few months. For now at least we've discovered some unexpected common ground, and the longest phone conversation we've had in years.

(Originally posted at dkos - with minor edits - because we had a pleasantly unexpected glut of FP posts last night)