[RayChuang88]

Michael Medved in his autobiography Right Turns asked that very question to his parents. He wrote that it was because Jews identified themselves with the Democratic Party for so long that they couldn't think of an alternative.

[driftless2]

Sounds like my Catholic parents. They voted for and identified as Dems all their lives despite being very religious and socially conservative. My father was a WWII vet as well and fiercely patriotic. Republicans were rich, greedy people who hated the poor and disliked Catholics.

Everybody who was Catholic I knew voted for Dems. Certainly, at my Catholic grade school all the nuns were pro-Kennedy and Democrats. I assumed all my Protestant neighbors voted for Republicans.

Then one day a Catholic family moved into the neighborhood. The father was an extra nice guy .....and a Republican!!! I still remember the Goldwater sticker on his car. I asked my father why a nice guy like Mr. B...... would vote for Republicans. Especially if he was a Catholic. My father didn't have an answer.

My mother and father had voted for Dems all their lives, because that's what middle class Catholics were supposed to do. They're both dead now, but in his latter years my father called himself an independent. He never told me, but I wonder what caused him to change.