Converts?

Back when crime was a bigger political issue, there was an old Washington joke that went something like this:

Q: What do you call a Republican?

A: A Democrat who's been mugged.

I think today there's a corollary to that old joke that goes something like this:

Q: What do you call a Democrat?

A: A Republican who's been malpracticed on.

I found a few of these people while researching my book, and they provided an interesting window into GOP politics. One particularly telling interview came from Gary Murphree, the vice president of Dutch Lubricants, a large "Christ-centered" oil company, who found himself on the receiving end of one of George W. Bush's legal reform efforts.

Murphree told me that he thought Bush would go down in the books as the worst president in American history. The statement was extraordinarily frank coming from a former honorary chair of the Mississippi Republican Party. Murphree once made six-figure contributions to the GOP, but he told me he wasn't going to give the party another dime until Bush was out of office, and that he wasn't alone among Republicans in his state.

I don't know how this sentiment will play out tomorrow, but if Murphree's comments are any indication, the Democrats would be smart not to write off the South in 2008.