It’s like a family name, it gets handed down and its hard to change. My grandmother and grandfather were fervent Democrats, but they grew up in the great depression and fell for the New Deal. My Grandfather was a career Air Force officer and my mom an Air Force BRAT. He went on leave with my grandma to a Florida hotel that had a sign “No Blacks, No Jews, No Dogs”. He was in uniform so they didn’t really question him and his name wasn’t particularly or obviously Jewish.
Anyway, those kinds of stories have been told around Jewish dinner tables for generations. So the idea of “social justice” comes from hearing those stories. I don’t think it truly means marxism I think it means one thing to the New Deal generation and quite another to the boomers and possibly something else to Gen X and Y. (if gen X and Y even stand for anything that’s real... open to debate).
Anyway, I grew up in a liberal democrat home, and I went to a liberal democrat school, but I knew it wasn’t right. But they did teach me that totalitarianism was the biggest evil of the 20th century (and on that they were right). So 1+1=2 I instantly became an anti-federalist, anti-statist. Big government = bad evil government. Civics class taught me that the GOP was the party of the small government and local control, so when I turned 18 as a senior in High School, there was no question in my mind I would join the GOP despite that my entire family were democrats.
Sadly, I have discovered that the GOP has not really been the party they told me it was in civics class.
I guess we were both fortunate that we were able to go to a real American civics class, unlike many kids in public schools today who seem to come out as illiterate in American government and politics. And the scary thing is that these kids are generally gung-ho for leftists and actually vote for them.
I myself am disappointed in the GOP, but McCain is far from the first "moderate" to become the GOP presidential candidate in the post WWII era though he is clearly preferable to the 'Rat alternative.