But Specter isn't the only Republican who has given serious thought to leaving the party. On a recent trip, I met a businessman who had voted Republican in every presidential election since 1984, the year he turned 18. He started listening to conservative talk radio in the early 1990s, a decade he remembers as the time when he started making serious money as a car salesman. As the housing market boomed, he turned to selling real estate in southwest Florida, usually to recent immigrants. But about two years ago, after an expensive divorce, he lost his own house to foreclosure, and he started working several part-time jobs, including driving a livery cab. Then he wound up in a car accident. He was lucky that the medical expenses were covered under his auto insurance, because he didn't -- and still doesn't -- have health insurance. This gentleman has had a bad run. Yet he wasn't complaining. He did have the sense, however, that today's Republican Party is out of touch with people like him.
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