Posted on 12/11/2007 4:57:57 AM PST by gridlock
I was looking at a Hillary thread today, which said that if she won the nomination, a lot of Democrats would abandon the Democrat Party. It reminded me of when I finally left the Democrats and "turned to the Dark Side", as my family says. It struck me that FReepers must have a lot of interesting stories about how they came to be here, and that these stories should be told.
Please post your testimony below. I'll start...
Wow, great post. Sorry about the rift with your parents, but you know you’re on the RIGHT side... :o)
My Dad was a Republican for as long as I can remember in a family of Democrats (Mom was a cousin of Watkins Abbott (D-VA)). My twin brother went the teacher route and became a Democrat. I went the technical route and have always been a Republican. My other brother and sister are Republicans.
My favorite memory of Dad was when he put a “President Ford” bumper sticker on the front bumper of my brother’s car (the teacher). For over 2 weeks he couldn’t figure out why all the other teachers at his school stopped talking to him. Then he found the bumper sticker - I guess you don’t look at the front bumper that much.
I grew up in a conservative family and married into another one. I though everyone was like us........ until JFK. That is when I knew what I was and who the other side was.
That the folks running it have as much contempt for consevatives as the 'Rats do.
Is there anything I can do, as a humble FReeper, to make you like it better?
Not unless you can change that, grid :)
Rest assured that I have the highest regard for you, as I do for all conservatives. Now all we have to do is arrange it so somebody with that attitude is running the GOP!
AMEN and THANK YOU, FRiend.
What's your story? (For me: Saw the Light thru Ronald Reagan, and have never looked back...)
Just got moved back up here to MN though. I've already started rounding folks up for Jason Lewis' little Tax Rally next year. I figure of the 30 or so I've gotten commitments from, about 12 may actually show up. We'll see...
Why do you ask? Are you out of ideas? We keep trying to haul them back from their leftward slide, and they keep sliding if you take your eyes off them for a second.
Amen to that! :)
What an interesting question - and answers! Thank you! My parents were conservative though we got papers from the entire political spectrum coming to our door. The mailman must have been stumped! I grew up reading the Conscience of a Conservative etc. I stuffed mailboxes for Goldwater in 1964. I loved Reagan but unfortunately lived overseas during many of those years so I didn’t get to hear him everyday. When George H W Bush was elected my 6 year old daughter heard “President Bush” on the radio and she exploded - NO! It’s President REAGAN! Her world was turned upside down. And sadly, so was ours.
'Rats. RINOs. No diff. And I'll be darned if I'm gonna vote for someone just 'cuz he's got an R after his name.
Born a Republican, and every time I questioned it, and looked at the Dems offering... I only confirmed further that I was a Republican.
I’m in Ga.
Voted for Zell Miller once.
My family has been Republican since Fremont, before that we were whigs.
Not at all but they find it easy to ignore just a few however we have recently seen (remember what happened to "comprehensive" immigration reform) what many can do!
We keep trying to haul them back from their leftward slide, and they keep sliding if you take your eyes off them for a second.
Then we need to try harder and stop taking our eyes off them!
I find myself drawn to anti-tax efforts, these days, rather than toward the Republicans. The Republicans in New Jersey have avoided running on a consistent anti-tax platform, for reasons I cannot understand. They must not like winning, is all I can figure.
Your sins are forgiven...
bttt, and sfl.
When I saw President Reagan give a speech at the Sears shopping center in Lincoln Park Michigan on a cold rainy night.
I would like to tell you how I became a conservative instead of a Republican.
I was born in ‘72. My first recollection of a seeing a President on TV was Jimmy Carter. Even at my young age, I did not like the man. I did not like how he carried himself and, later in life, I realized that at the time, I had a mistrust for him. Then came the Presidential election between Reagan and Carter. Carter was not even in the same league as this man. Reagan didn’t just say what he needed to say to get elected. He MEANT what was coming out of his mouth. He LOVED this country and it showed in the way that he presented himself and the way that he represented America. I distinctly remember being in the third grade and walking to school with two of my classmates. We were actually asking each other who we would vote for if we could. All three of us said Ronald Reagan.
Then came the media. After a landslide election, and then another landslide election, all that I ever heard on the nightly news (Yes, my family was a 6:00 and 11:00 nightly news family every night) was how horrible this man was or how stupid this man was or how others really ran the show and that Reagan was just a puppet. In fact, I remember watching Robin Williams doing a comedy skit. I liked him from Mork and Mindy (did I just say that?) and Happy Days so I watched his skit. There he was pretending that Reagan was a muppet controlled by Jim Henson. And I just kept thinking, “That is NOT this man.”
I don’t have much of a memory of Bush I as I was an upper classman in high school and sports dominated my life. That was until January of 1991 as I watched the sky of Iraq light up on my little TV in my new apartment during my freshman year of college. Daily discussions among my friends revolved around whether we would be recruited to go to Iraq. Strangely, I wasn’t afraid either way.
Then 1992. Media has painted Bush I as the anti-christ and that America is worse than ever (I see a trend here). Most around me did not care for Clinton and did not care for Bush I. And so began the phenomena that was Perot. He appealed to those who really didn’t want Clinton but were either sick of Bush I or just how the media portrayed Bush I, probably the latter. He caught on but then he dropped out? WTF? Really? Dropped out? So that ended Perot’s story and we got Clinton. Dammit!
That really torked me off, but for the next four years I was in college and didn’t really have much time to breathe as I tried to get my engineering degree. Then, after all of the stories, after all of the deflections, after all of the scandals, he gets re-elected? Really?
So then I totally lost interest in politics because I sincerely did not understand what America saw in this man. A man that had coined the phrase “Global Economy”. A man that was destroying America’s moral core. Because of this man, “Moral Relativism” became widely accepted as the norm. And I was telling everyone around me that we were living in a false economy. Can you say Dot Com bust?
So, here comes 2000. Bush v Gore. I honestly liked Bush and what he was saying. I watched all the debates and agreed with him on many points. Hence, I voted for him in 2000.
Then, 9/11. At that moment, my life changed in a dramatic way. Deep down, I knew that we here in this country have been taking our freedoms for granted for a long time. I knew that having Clinton as our leader for 8 years was not going to turn out well. I began to read and research like never before, to learn about the world around me that the nightly news was NOT covering. What I learned threw me for a loop. I had no idea how long or how deep I had been lied to by OUR media. Lied to and shielded from reality. I felt like such a fool.
I became a huge Bush supporter in 2004. His message of an Ownership Society was truly inspiring! We ended up winning complete control of Congress and holding the White House. Then, the Republican Senators betrayed the President as he tried the unthinkable, reform Social Security. The nation had just rallied around a man that had been beaten up since 9/11 and put him back into office. He campaigned with a clear message and with clear goals. The people said, “Yes. We want this.” And the Congress said no.
I am currently a Hunter supporter as I see him as a strong leader. I would love to see him get the nomination, but, for whatever reason, he is not polling well. Some of our candidates will be harder to stomach than others, but I truly see this as a point in time where a Democrat SHOULD NOT be the President. Therefore, I will be voting Republican. Period.
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