That all came to an end in June of 1992. I saw the rise of Bill Clinton, and was prepared to support him for President. I was somewhat uneasy, because he was clearly a smarmy operator and liar, but I thought that since he was in the same party, he was the best choice.
Then came the Sista Souljah speech. I remember thinking about how this was a transparent play for the centrist vote, and how nobody had ever heard of Sistah Souljah before, and that Bill Clinton was just abusing this woman to score political points. I expected to see a reaction in the press and editorial pages chiding Clinton for being so shallow and manipulative. Instead, I remember seeing opinion pieces about his brave stand against the NAACP and how wonderfully tough he was. Even after a week, people were only criticizing him in the context of how, although it was a shallow and cynical racial sell-out, it was a subtle master stroke of political genius.
At that point, I realized that there was no substance behind Bill Clinton, and that he would say anything to be elected. I further realized that the newspapers, editorial writers, and television commentators knew full well that this was so, but were going to say or do anything to make sure he was elected anyway. It was a stunning revelation to me, because I had been blindly believing such people all my life. I started to critically evaluate the candidates, began dismissing much of what I saw on TV or read in the newspapers, and wound up pulling the Republican lever for President George H. W. Bush that November, the first time I had voted for a Republican in my whole life.
And I never looked back.
I voted for Carter om '76 - I just did not like Ford. I voted for RR in '80, and have voted 'R' every time since.
The 2000 election certainly convinced me that EVERY vote counts, and that the dims will try to steal any election they think they can.
Rush convinced me that I am a conservative, not a moderate.
Anyone who does not vote R next fall is giving the election to the dims. Stand for you convictions in the PRIMARY, not the GENERAL. Any of you who are one issue voters get what you deserve. Unfortunately, so do the rest of us. 2006 is a great example of what can happen when some stay home.
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.
What's your story? (For me: Saw the Light thru Ronald Reagan, and have never looked back...)
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.
My family has been Republican since Fremont, before that we were whigs.
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.
As I stood there on one of the most historic (1639) and beautiful Greens in all of New England it all started to make sense to me...I have voted for the Republican in every election in my life and have NEVER voted for a Democrat.
When LBJ was elected in 1964 and I saw his “Great Society”
shoved down the throat of America, I realized I was 180 degrees in opposition to socialism and RATs.
When I was old enough to vote, my first vote was cast for Nixon in 1968.
I’m proud to say I’ve never voted for a single RAT. Ever.
Early 70s radical Yippie...southern style.....before culture wars and sanctimonious self inflated attacks on my region became so popular even amongst conservatives like some here.
Had that been the case I would have likely never been liberal at all but in any event it was more of a rebellion against what was seen as a staid Old Guard or what we called the Establishment....which ironically would be the entrenched Left today.
I started changing after college and in my early 20s while seeing the world and getting a better perspective and seeing what an abysmal failure Carter was.
By my aged 27....I was 90% Conservative.....since then I have only become more so on most issues except a handful where I border libertarian.....marijuana, bedroom morality, etc
Pivotal moments for me were experiencing civil war in Sierra Leone a bit, violence in Haiti, knowing someone who lost everything in Rhodesia and then more or less went thru it again in South Africa, dealing with incredibly snotty liberal people in Manhattan when I lived there who loved to tell me how superior they were to me as a Southerner meanwhile their own “Negroes” lived in squalor in the South Bronx and Bed Sty and Harlem wastelands out of sight and mind unlike where I came from.
Having a large family too helps make one conservative...especially on social issues.
Btw...I am not optimistic....from the vantage point of 50 years of life I think we are in serious trouble.
It was when I saw Bill and Hillary get off scot-free on 60 Minutes. Their years of corruption glanced over. Their scam of a marriage given credibility. It turned my stomach because their sleaziness oozed from the TV screen. That was my defining moment.
When Reagan was sworn in and the Iranian hostages boarded the plane. Never looked back.
My father used to have me watch the soviet diplomats on TV when they were asked questions by reporters. My father would then ask me “What did he say?” When I realized that the soviet didn’t say anything of substance, and didn’t answer the questions asked, a light clicked on in my head. That’s why I’m a conservative today, not a republican and definately not a commun... democrat.
I was brought up as a Democrat. I was a member of Teen Democrats, and even answered phones for the Democratic Party Telethon.
While my journey to conservativism began much earlier, I left the Democratic party in 1998. Like you, I left because I was fed up with Bill Clinton. I couldn’t be a part of a party that supported and enabled such an obvious sociopath (or really, pair of sociopaths if you count Hellary.) I changed my registration from Democrat to Independent, and even made a post on Free Republic about it.
Something amusing happened after this. My father, who was the penultimate yellow dog democrat, wanted me to drive him to the grocery store. I couldn’t do it at the time he wanted, because I wanted to go vote in a primary. There were no Democrats in this primary, so it looked like I would have to ‘fess up. The conversation went like this.
ME: There’s something I need to tell you
POP: What?
ME: I’m gay
POP: (long silence)
ME: I’m just kidding, I’m not gay. I’m just not a Democrat anymore.
POP: (relieved laughter)
I’d seen something similar on USENET under “how to tell your parents you are an atheist.” I figure not being a democrat was pretty much the same thing to my father!
I read women’s magazines in my teens and early 20s, in the 70s and 80s. I was as politically unaware as a busy, happy, blonde student could be, focusing only on social life. In these magazines, it was complete indoctrination, shaming those who were not liberal and praising the whole liberal/feminist playbook. I just ate it like food and assumed it was all true. TV and movies certainly were no different. And don’t even get me started on the college professors.
My first eye-opening came on my junior year abroad in France, when I had a serious course taught by a famous Communiste. I was taken aback that he who believed in one bowl of rice with a fishhead in it for each of us, was wearing an expensive velour tracksuit with gold medallions on chains around his neck. Hmmm.
I still didn’t get it until years later, back in Europe, I found my job at an international firm had, as they say, become redundant. I was on the dole. OH. MY. GOSH. I had also just had a baby. So here I was, receiving an insanely large salary (80% of my previous) just to stay at home, for years. All I had to do was to apply for 5 different jobs each week. And in Europe you were allowed to put personal details on your Curriculum Vitae. So right up front I put that I was married (bosses are hoping for SINGLE female employees) and worse, HAD A BABY. It was also mentioned in there that my French and German were “spoken only,” because I could not write fluently in those languages. PIECE O’ CAKE. My best friend was in the same situation and we lived very nicely on our government salaries. But both of us became conservatives when we saw first hand how horribly unfair socialism really is. Changed my life.
16 years old after I read CONSCIENCE OF A CONSERVATIVE, WHY NOT VICTORY, McCARTHY AND HIS ENEMIES, GOD AND MAN AT YALE, NONE DARE CALL IT TREASON, and MASTERS OF DECEIT.
Like many of you, it is conservative before Republican. For a couple years, I went insane. As a reaction to Nixon, I made the youthful indiscretion of voting for Carter. That was certainly stupid.
When I was flying home from Yugoslavia in 1983 and after witnessing the stench of communism, realizing how glad I was that Ronald Reagan was president.