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...
2000
I became a CONSERVATIVE in 1993, but changed parties in the Bush v Gore debacle.
Agreed.
My family came from a long line of Southern Democrats.
My father used the line, I did not leave the Democrat party, the party left me.
He finally changed over during the Bork hearings. He was fed up with Sen. Kennedy asking questions he would be unwilling to ask of himself.
So could the RINOs.
RINOs - could
I see a difference. How about you?
I have been trying to think of a RINO that is against the WOT. Some are weak-kneed, but (other than a bunch of damn yankees) are there any that was to give up, like the dims?
I became a conservative in 1964 in high school when I read Barry Goldwater’s books.
We win, they lose!!
Ditto
Well, they sent me to Tennessee’s Boy’s State when I was 16 and actually got “dog catcher” because they didn’t like my laughing at how seriously the other boys kissed ass and lied. Made my little speech about integrity and how people respond better to the truth, which went over like a lead balloon. They were grooming dirtbags, in my opinion. That’s when I learned I wasn’t a professional politician.
It was a few years later when at MTSU a Vietnam veteran jerked me up by the collar of my Army jacket and said “If you weren’t a kid I’d tear your face off like I should tear the Rangers patch off that coat”. I had no idea that “colors” should never be worn by the undeserving, and the fault there was the person selling the jacket failing to remove the patch. That’s when I learned I wasn’t a hippie liberal. That also motivated me to join the service. Thank you, angry veteran, wherever you are.
In the service under the Gipper while helping him win the Cold War: being a Republican not only meant being right; it helped save the world as we knew it.
Then the Pubbies went aimless while Prom King Clinton took the stage. I hung with the Libertarians for a bit but eventually figured out they were proposing a template that most humans can’t live up to. Oh, and too many whine and cheesy people.
Eventually it struck me that it’s far better to be a conservative first and a party adherent second (if at all). So now I take endless abuse from party-over-all Republicans on a website that’s purportedly about conservatism. If I didn’t get so much static from the usual suspects I’d start worrying.
My defection from the Democrat party to the Republic came slowly & logically.
Actually, I was only a Democrat because my parents were. I honestly think there is some gene for insanity. They hung around the worst crackpots you could find. California loons. Amoral, spacey.
This free-for-all liberalism seemed to be the direction the Democratic party was heading. Definitely not my father’s party. I voted for Clinton, but in my hearts I felt there was a moral void within his administration.
I began to question things like affirmative action, cultural poverty, death penalty. After one argument with my father, he said, “You sound like a Republican.” Maybe then I saw the light.
Actually, 9/11 was really the clincher. After seeing the lunacy of the leftist intellectuals & realizing the need for a powerful leader, I really came into reality & formally switched parties.
To this day, I’m still a moderate right-winger. I think the Republicans are a bit too strict on certain things (i.e. social services, abortion). But I find them easier to work with than the Democrats, who have totally left this orbit.
I’m sure that veteran is proud of you. ;-)
Expanding a bit on what I mentioned earlier, I was recalling, actually, that I was fed up with the Dems on their corruption at the time I left it (at the precocious age of 12, no less). I actually became reinforced in moving rightward watching tv shows in the mid to late ‘80s like the late Morton Downey (RIP). I appreciated more his confrontational, “take no prisoners” attitude the left pioneered but which they called “mean spiritedness” when the right employed it, and then only their verbal tactics (since right-wingers rarely burned things down, blew $hit up, or murdered folks en masse). Seeing ole Mort poke his nicotine-stained fingers in the face of thugs he’d unapologetically call “pablum puking liberals” always made my day.
Although I visited Free Republic the very first day I got the internet (10/31/1998), it would be nearly 3 years before I formally registered, and I chose the harder route of going to where the sinners were out in newsgroup usenet-land and went in hand-to-hand (or keyboard-to-keyboard) combat with the vicious Clintonite left. I soon became a hardened veteran of flamewars, f-words, and “your mama wears combat boots” (or birkenstocks, whichever was a bigger insult) schtick before I officially joined FR in 2001.
Been kinda quiet ever since. ;-D
Been registered Republican since before voting for Ronald Reagan.
I consider myself a conservative first, not a Republican.
I consider myself to the right of Republican, but do vote for them in the main elections over communist/socialist/Democrats since Republicans sometimes do good and other times just do less damage.
I think Democrats giving away the treasury for votes have forced a lot of Republican politicians to the left.
I’d like to see Republican candidates be more conservative and not fear running on their conservative principles and values.
At this time I am pulling for Fred Thompson to get the Republican nomination.
No matter who the Republican guy will be, they will get my vote over the fire breathing Democrat.
We have judges, taxes, socialized medicine, cultural decay, social security, the war on terror and the whole direction of the country at stake this election.
God bless everyone here.
You all have a Merry Christmas or whatever!
" A wise man's heart directs him towards the right,but the foolish man's heart directs him to the left."
Ecclesiastes 10:2
Well, while the professor and most classmates just glared angrily at me, one classmate jumped out of her chair and began shouting at me. Nobody there objected to her rant. And I hadn't actually advocated anything yet; merely raised a few facts and a question or so that wasn't part of the received dogma.
It kind of seemed like that scene in 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' when the crowd of 'pod people' suddenly recognize that the protagonist isn't one of their fellow alien zombies.
It was about then that I decided I didn't want to be part of what was beginning to seem like a leftist academic cult. I read Buckley's compilation 'Keeping The Tablets: American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century', Rossiter's 'Conservatism, The Thankless Persuasion', Russell Kirk's 'Portable Conservative Reader', George Nash's 'History of 20th Century Conservatism', and a collection of Ayn Rand essays, cast my first general election vote for Ronald Reagan, helped start the Republican Club on campus, and have been generally pleased to not idolize any ideology ever since.
Horowitz and Colliers' 'Destructive Generation, Second Thoughts About the Sixties' explains a lot of what I experienced on campus.
Also, there was a neighbor of mine when I was in high school in suburban Boston whom I helped build a horse stable. He was extraordinarily capable, bright, knowledgeable, and concerned about issues in the world. An engineer, pilot, and business consultant ...and the first Conservative I'd actually gotten to know. So, there was that example suggesting that conservatism might not be the troglodite intellectual/moral slum I had been lead to believe. He remains one of the people I most try to emulate. Personal example goes a long way.
I’m not sure if I ever had an “epiphany” so much as I figured that this was who I was. However...I was about 13 when our family moved to Wyoming and on a faint radio station was someone who, although not perhaps for everyone, was saying things that I had never really heard articulated by anyone—even my teachers as kids my age are trained to say by our guidance in the publick skoolz.
That man was Rush Limbaugh. Would I have found the conservative movement on my own without Rush? Maybe. But kids like me now have an official name...Rush Babies! :)
After joining the USAF in 77 and having peanut boy as CIC.
Had to get behind Regan. Was the first election I could vote in.
Turned 18 in 1972 and voted for George McGovern. Then I voted for Jimmy Carter in ‘76. In 1980, I was one of the Reagan democrats and have been voting Republican ever since until this coming election. I am afraid the Republican party is beginning to resemble the Democrat party of old. Ronald Reagan made me proud to be an American again. Anyone to the left of Ronald Reagan will not get my vote, I don’t give a damn what the consequences are.
Very much liked the post.
I do find it discouraging that Republicans would even consider Huck or Rudy but we have far too many candidates splitting the vote. They're all running to the right so if one of them is elected to the presidency, perhaps they've boxed themselves in and will follow through, at least on the judges and that's the biggie.
Even if someone is unhappy with Bush, they have to admit we've made good progress with the SC. Let's not lose ground.
After hearing the debate between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, I registered as a Republican and voted for the first time in my life. Nothing better illustrated to me the difference between the best of Republicanism and the typical liberal Democrat. Since then, we’ve had a lot of variability on the Republican side, but much, much more of the same Democrat idiocy.
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