Something New Is Happening. Republicans Are Stopping Me to Say Thank You.

For years the reaction from most Republicans was anger. Lately it's been something else.

Since speaking out for truth and taking election denialism head-on, it had mostly been Democrats coming up to me to thank me. I am noticing a shift.

It happened again the other day. I was out running an errand, not thinking about politics for once, when a man caught my eye and started walking toward me.

For a long time now, when a stranger recognizes me and makes a beeline in my direction, I have to be at least a little wary for my own safety. I voted to impeach a president from my own party. I said loudly what a lot of people didn’t want to hear. That earns you a certain kind of attention, and plenty of it over the years has not been friendly. So when this man opened his mouth and the first words out of it were “I’m a Republican…” I wasn’t sure how the conversation would go.

And then he finished the sentence. “I’m a Republican, but I just want to thank you for what you’re doing.”

I don’t always know what to say in these moments. This time I think I just said thank you back, and shook his hand, and we both went on with our day. But I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

The truth is, almost everyone who approaches me on the street says something positive to me. And they are almost all independents or Democrats.

But suddenly, Republicans are stopping me to talk. The first couple times, I just filed it away in my head and didn’t draw any sweeping conclusions.

Now it’s happening more and more. They almost always start with, “I’m a Republican, but…” And then something kind. Something grateful. Something I genuinely did not used to hear from people who still felt a connection to the GOP.

First, a caveat: I’m one person, and the plural of anecdote isn’t data. But here’s the thing: when I stopped treating these encounters as random and started paying attention to them as a pattern, I realized the national numbers are telling the same story my personal experience is suggesting.

For the first time in NBC News Decision Desk polling, fewer than half of Republicans say they strongly approve of the job Donald Trump is doing. Strong approval among Republicans has fallen to 41 percent, down from 52 percent in the spring. Even among people who identify as MAGA, that intense, all-in support dropped from 71 percent to 62 percent. His overall approval sits at 36 percent, a record low in that poll.

Now, most Republicans still say they approve of him in some general sense. I’m not telling you the party has walked away from him. What I’m telling you is that the intensity is draining out of it. The fever, if you want to call it that, might just be starting to break.

And you can see it everywhere once you start looking. The party’s own midterm convention is turning into an embarrassment, with sitting members of congress quietly declining invitations rather than be photographed on that stage weeks before an election. In races around the country, Democratic candidates running against MAGA-aligned opponents are pulling real support from Republicans and independents who have simply had enough. The man on the sidewalk is not an outlier. He’s the leading edge of something.

Let me tell you why this really matters to me. I didn’t do any of this to be thanked. I did it because I couldn’t look my son in the eye someday and tell him I stayed quiet when it counted. The cost of that decision was real, and it’s been paid, and I’ve made my peace with it.

The point is what each conversation represents. Every one of those conversations is a person who is doing one of the hardest things there is to do in politics, or in life. They’re changing their mind. They’re looking at something they used to believe, or at least used to tolerate, and admitting to themselves that it isn’t what they thought it was. That takes real courage, and I think we in the pro-democracy world sometimes forget how much.

Because there’s a very real temptation I want to clearly reject. When someone who cheered all of this for years finally comes around, the easy human response is to say, where were you? What took you so long? Do you have any idea what it cost the rest of us while you were on the other side?

I understand that impulse. On some days I’ve felt it. But I think it’s a mistake.

A movement cannot win by welcoming only the people who agreed with you from the very beginning. You can only save democracy with a majority, and you build a majority by making room for people the moment they’re ready to walk through the door.

If we punish people for changing their minds, we teach everyone still on the fence that changing their mind isn’t worth the humiliation. That’s exactly backwards. We should be making it as easy and as honorable as possible.

So let me say something directly to the Republican who reads this and recognizes themselves in it. The one who’s been uneasy for a while now. Who doesn’t like what the party has become but hasn’t known what to do about it. Who maybe stopped me on a sidewalk, or thought about it and didn’t.

There’s room for you here. You don’t have to agree with me about taxes or spending or a dozen other things to agree with me about the thing that matters most right now, which is whether this country stays a democracy that answers to its people. You don’t have to renounce your whole life. You don’t have to grovel.

You just have to decide, like I did, that some things matter more than the party label. And when you do, you’ll find a whole lot of people, from every corner of the political map, who are glad you’re here and aren’t interested in re-litigating how long it took you to arrive.

Let me be clear about one thing so there’s no confusion. I am not softening on MAGA. Not for a second. The movement that tried to overturn an election, that treats cruelty as strength and loyalty as the only virtue, gets no quarter from me and never will. I’ll stand against it as long as it exists.

Standing firm against the thing and standing open to the people leaving it are not in tension. They’re the same fight. You beat an authoritarian movement by shrinking it, and you shrink it by welcoming everyone willing to come home.

So to the man on the sidewalk, and to everyone who’s given me a version of that same handshake lately: thank you. Not for the kind words, though I appreciate them. Thank you for changing your mind. It’s the bravest and most hopeful thing I’m seeing in this country right now, and there’s a lot more of it happening than the loudest voices would ever let you believe. That’s not just good news. That’s how this all ends well.