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...
Thank you for making me laugh....COMMIETOWN! BWWWWAAAAHHHHHAAA!
From then on, I was at bitter odds politically with my New Dealer parents who thought FDR was a semi-deity and JFK was destined for greatness.
I was in college then, and your experience is exactly what mine was. Jimmy Carter's spineless response to Khomeni did the job.
IMHO, much of our trouble today can be traced to that spineless response. You cannot show weakness in that part of the World.
I was firmly conservative long before I first heard Rush, sometime in 1988. But I would credit Rush for changing many minds for conservatism, in fact, he has probably single handedly done more to advance the conservative perspective than nearly anyone in contemporaty history.
I think Rush’s great talint is that he confirms to you what you already know. I don’t know how many he has brought over, but I am certain he has kept many on our side, and kept the MSMers from peeling them away.
I was a social worker during the Carter years. Again and again I witnessed the futility of the social welfare system to actually help people. Instead, people born and raised by the system were kept in a permanent state of “victimhood”. I actually had “clients” train me in how the system worked (or didn’t work...e.g., People in public housing had something new called cable television but I still couldn’t afford it for my family.). The economy was such a mess that I couldn’t afford a mortgage with double digit mortgage rates so my family and I lived at the mercy of a series of landlords. I also watched my country humiliated by Iranian terrorists and impotent as the Soviets walked into Afghanistan. Then, along came Ronald Reagan spreading fear and terror into the hearts of all liberals. Of course when he was elected I was laid off from my job but by that time I was more than ready to move on and I was philosophical about it. I took a job that paid less in the private sector and I worked for a couple of years before going back to graduate school for engineering. Low and behold I saw that the world didn’t end with Reagan. He cut taxes and the economy improved, he bombed Quaddafy and the SOB shut the hell up but most of all... Reagan made it clear that it was quite all right to be proud of your country as the shining city on the hill. Now I’m not a Reagan worshiper and still see things he did that in retrospect I wouldn’t have done (amnesty, cut and run from Lebanon, etc.) but Reagan came along at precisely the time I needed him... when I was starting my family and needing to think of things larger than myself. I still remained an independent, politcally. It wasn’t until the Clinton years that I got off the mushy moderate fence and joined the GOP... but that’s another story.
Me. too. I got home in 1970, registered for the draft, and let my stoner, draft dodging friends talk me into registering Peace and Freedom. I went back the next day, after I came to, and re registered Republican.
I’m registered Libertarian now, but have never voted anything but Republican. The plus side to not registering R is that you don’t get deluged with pleas for money. The down side is that you have no say in the primaries..
Michael Frazier
BFL
The guy was brought up on charges by NYS attorney General Bob Abrahams. And did Bill say a word in this guy’s defense? Did the MSM make note of this glaring paradox? Of course not.
Such hypocrisy from a man who protested against his own country on Communist soil. How silent the Press that loves a liberal protest in any form. It made my blood boil.
Tsongas....eeeww
and before that?
Cotton Mather?
I sent several bricks for the Send-a-brick program. Next time, I do so on the end of a ballistic arc...
The Carter years did it for me! Reagan was the first Republican I voted for and I was so happy to do it. I stayed registered as a Democrat for a few years though I was voting conservative. I changed my affiliation formally when Clinton was in office.
A lot of Reagan on this thread...
You think anybody from the RNC is listening?
What can I tell you?
But I snapped out of it.
I was born into an active Democrat Family.
Step-father was a county Chairman for several years, and JFK was considered a god to them.
I grew up helping with Democrat campaigns, and after military service, became a county coordinator for Evan Bayh’s first run for Gov...
Bayh’s prime issues were doing away with PATRONAGE, and taking the license branches out of the control of the Parties, and returning them to state control, points I was very behind (They were local corruption machines at the time).
My Conversion to conservative really began before that, and Bayh was a VERY conservative Democrat for the time..
The REAL change came when I realized that my meager salary at the time (21K) qualified me as one of Clinton’s “Rich That Gained Unfairly in the 80’s!”
I share your pain. I graduated in 1980 and voted for the first time. I was politically unaware, lived in New Orleans, and thought I was supposed to vote Democrat. I joined the USAF in 1983 and became a Reagan apostle soon afterward.
I realized I was always conservative, but I just never gave it much thoguht until I realized my mistake in 1980.
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