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Being a Republican meant a lot to me. I was the youngest member of the Republican Town Committee in the history of my hugely Democratic town (my mother was the Dem moderator). It was a no brainer for me -- the Republicans always seemed like the party of the successful.

I put off switching to unaffiliated until I came across a letter that Ward Connerly sent me. I had sent him an email when he had threatened to leave the party. In the email he used Reagan's quote about the Democrats -- "I didn't leave the party. It left me."

I switched that afternoon. It was melancholy, mostly because the Republican party is such an unbelievable disappointment.

Hey, I know what you are saying. It was really tough for me to come to the same conclusion. And I did after 32 years of voting, working for, and contributing to both the Party and candidates. In this last election, as a non-aligned citizen, I did send the Bush campaign some money. Not so much as I am a BushBot, but I did and for that matter still do believe he was a far better choice than Algore whom I did not want to see even in the office as dog-catcher.

But, like I stated to LS, while I may in the future still cast my votes for the GOP candidate, to take that for granted is pure folly on the part of the GOP leadership. And for mainstream Republicans to continue to trash disenfranchised republicans that hold to principled conservative values is equal folly. But who said we didn't have the choice to engage in folly.

It has been my experience over the past two years that I did not make a mistake in becoming a "non-aligned" voter. But to each his/her own. These are choices we all get to still make on our own, so far.

Just think if the two major political parties did ever merge we could have our own version of a Nationalist Socialist Party. Hmmmmmm, seems there already was one of those in recent history.