Republicans are from Mars, Democrats are from Venus...
...or something. In any case, the New York Times reports on some fascinating MRI studies that may lend some understanding to partisan politics. It seems that our brains are more apt to react emotionally to a candidate of our party, and intellectually, as if girding for debate, to a candidate of the opposition.
I guess none of this is really a surprise, but it is worth bearing in mind that we all have a tendency to view our own less critically than we do our opponents. I'm perpetually amazed that many of my friends and I can share so many of the same principles, not to mention the same pool of facts and data, and yet arrive at such markedly different conclusions. This helps, in part, to explain why.