Why did the Chicken Cross Party Lines?

I opened the door and found one Abby Holman, Candidate for State Representative, standing on my porch.
She was about my age, blonde, an intelligent face. Abby gave me one of her campaign brochures. “I hope you’ll be voting in November,” she said.
“I always vote,” I said. “Are you a Democrat or a Republican? You look like a Democrat.”
I can’t tell you exactly what I meant by that, but surely it’s not a very nice thing to say to someone you’ve only just met.
“Republican, actually,” she said.
“Oh, what a shame,” I said. “Okay, well so long!” I began to swing the door closed.
“Wait,” she said. “You’d never vote for a Republican? Ever?”
“Of course I’d vote for a Republican,” I said. “I used to BE a Republican. But you know how it is.”
She raised an eyebrow. “How is it?”
“Well,” I said. “Let me ask you some questions. Your position on abortion?”
“I’m pro-choice.”
“Civil rights and legal protections for gay, lesbian, and transgendered people?”
“I’m for civil rights for everybody.”
“The war in Iraq?”
“A disaster.”
I took another hard look at Abby Holman, Candidate for State Representative.
“Dude,” I said. “You’re a Democrat. Didn’t you, like, get the memo?”
“I’m a Republican,” she said, “because I want to improve the business climate in Maine. Because I want us to be more responsible with the taxpayers’ money.”
I rubbed my temples. “You heard about the budget deficit, right? You know that when Clinton left office, we had a surplus? And now we have the biggest deficit in history? Cause they just HAD to give Bill Gates a tax cut?”
She nodded. “I’m running for the Augusta State House. Not Washington.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You still sound like a Democrat to me.”
“I used to be a Democrat,” she said, in kind of the same voice a woman might say, I used to drink a lotta tequila. “But then I left the party in the 1980s. You can be pro-business and still take socially progressive positions.”
I thought about this. “Ya think?” I said.
“What do you think of Olympia Snowe?”
Well, to be honest, there are times I am kind of fond of Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins too. It’s discouraging for me, as a dyed-in-my-pajamas Democrat, to know that they contribute to the Republican majority in the Senate, but then there are other times I’m delighted that my home state has two moderate, female Republican Senators. There have been plenty of times that Snowe and Collins have been all that has stood between their own party and something I disapprove of, like that time, for instance that the Republicans thought it might be clever to actually impeach a sitting President on account of him having yanked on somebody’s thong underwear.
Not that I’m for that, actually. I just didn’t think he should have been impeached for it. I also wasn’t crazy about having to listen to everyone talk about the man’s kielbasa for a year and a half, considering that there were, like, other things going on in the world that were just possibly more important.
“I like Olympia Snowe all right,” I said.
“I was her press secretary,” she said.
I was getting pretty tired of not disagreeing with her. There were Democrats I had less in common with than this Abby Holman. I’d VOTED for Democrats I had less in common with than the woman on my porch.
“Okay, fine,” I said, a broken woman.
“Thanks,” said Holman, and headed back to her car.
I don’t know who I’m voting for in November. I’m kind of hoping the Democrat turns out to be a single mom who has all of Abby Holman’s positions.
Did I mention she’s a single mom?
But as I stood there, I wondered this: What’s more ridiculous, a woman with all of Holman’s positions, running as a Republican?
Or a woman like me, who wouldn’t consider crossing party lines, even to vote for what she believes in?