Susana Martinez told her story at the 2012 GOP National convention. She says she had been a Democrat, and a man (I can’t remember who, came and spoke to her and her husband about politics in general, and ‘why she was not really a Democrat - but in reality she was a Republican - because her political views skewed towards conservatism.
She said at the convention, that she then studied the policies of the GOP vs the Democrats, and realized it was true. That was when she changed her political affiliation to GOP.
To my eye, though, Martinez looks like a standard center-left Republican who simply made an effort to slow down state spending.
There is no indication she wants to slow down legal immigration, which is steadily destroying Conservative political power.
There is no indication she wants to slow down work visas and Green Cards, which are destroying the wage scale for low skill Americans and American software engineers.
My instincts say she will be soft on USA military spending and soft on the defense of Israel.
She is soft on Abortion, which will demoralize some Christian Conservatives.
And my instincts say she will be way soft on the Constitution and will appoint many center-left judges like Chief Justice John Roberts.
I'm also not a great fan of former Democrat Ronald Reagan.
No question that 1981-1984 was the best single presidential term for Conservatives since Calvin Coolidge.
But things fell apart in 1985-1988.
Government spending increased dramatically.
Reagan made no serious attempt to privatize Social Security, and he approved a “rescue” plan that simply increased taxes and increased the retirement age.
He increased taxes in exchange for utterly bogus Democrat promises to control spending.
He signed the Reagan Amnesty in 1986 that ignited the avalanche of legal immigrants we live with today, and that would make it impossible for him to be elected governor of California in 2016.
There's no question that Reagan played a vital role in ending the Cold War.
In my opinion, though, if someone like Putin or a healthy Brezhnev had been leader of the Soviet Union from 1981-1988, instead of Gorbachev, I think we would still be fighting the Cold War.