[bigjoesaddle]

Please share your coments, thanks.

[IoCaster]

I rebelled at a young age. The most surprising part of this is that I was born and spent my first 17 years of life in NYC. I dimly remember being conservative in grade school. I even had a Nixon sticker of some kind on my looseleaf binder. Of course, I didn't understand anything about the issues, but I was certainly put off by the radical late 60's and early 70's hippie freaks. They didn't seem to make any sense with their counterculture idiocy. At the time my older half-brother was in Vietnam fighting for our country, while these sh!theads were tripping on LSD and spouting commie propaganda on TV. I despised them then and hold them in deep and utter contempt to this day. I hate socialists/commies/liberals with a deep and abiding degree of passion.

< /rant >

[SoDak]

My house wasn't very political, although my parents tended to vote dem. I first became aware of politics while Carter was busy destroying the country, and Reagan came on the scene to run against him. Reagan instantly became a hero to me, so I've never voted for a democrat for anything. My whole family is registered Republican now, however my sister married into a prominent Dem family 5 years ago, so she may have gone red, I don't bring it up much.

[adam stevens]

I guess I considered myself liberal up to September 11 but I wasn't active in politics at all. In 88, I voted for Bush, 92 Clinton, 96 Clinton, 2000 Bush.

[stylin19a]

I'll tell ya this right now.
When I'm on my death-bed, I will resign as a Repub and register as a RAT.
It's better that a RAT dies, than a good Rrepublican.

[TexasRepublic]

As a young man my grandfather was asked by his horrified Democrat family and relatives, "Since when did you become a Republican?", to which he replied, "When I learned to read".

[SunStar]

I voted for Clinton as well by mistake. Seeing our military secrets wholesaled to China by the Democrats was the turning point for me, and I vowed never again to vote Democrat.

Then, in 2000, the USS Cole was bombed. Bill Clinton did NOTHING WHATSOEVER in response to that act of war, DIRECTLY PREDICATING the attacks of 9/11. I walked around with seething anger for weeks after the Cole bombing.

We won't get fooled again.

[SupplySider]

I would not vote for McGovern. He was too far to the right for me. lol

[CaptainK]

Voted Democrat starting with Jimmy Carter up till Clinton's first election. I wasn't a typical brainwashed Democrat, in that I hated the Kennedy's, and could never understand the sycophantic followers who overlooked their appalling personal behavior. But I did support the party up until '92. What can I tell you. I was a big gaping bleeding heart and the only thing that snapped me out of it was Bill and Hill.
At the time I was hoping that the party would nominate Paul Tsongas who I thought was a decent guy.
However there was a moral bell in me that went off like a 5 alarm fire when Clinton was nominated. I gagged and laughed during the 60 Minutes interview. Anyone who can read body language could see ample evidence that these two despised each other but their love of power kept them together. Add to that, all the stories of Bill's hedonistic behavior in Arkansas and Hill's love of every miscreant that crossed her path and I was left with no alternative. I became a Republican and never looked back.
I'm not gloating when I say history has proven that my intuition was right on the money. The Clinton years are over but the unfortunate repercussions will be with us for untold years.

[x]

People do tend to act "left" in college: because they want to rebel, because everyone's doing it, to get dates, or because campus rightists tend to be exhibitionist types, real rebels and all the more unsettling, unpopular, and anti-social.

And there are far more people who go from Democrat to Republican after college than vice versa. It's because of the pressures of earning a living and the decreasing tolerance for poses and rhetoric. And since so many went left in college there's a larger pool to drain.

There does seem to be a small countertrend, though. David Brock, Michael Lind, or Glenn Loury, for example. Sometimes it's because some other identity -- black or gay or green or WASP or female or sexually active or irreligious -- is stronger than the conservative one. Or because the call of political camps and combats weakens as one grows older. A lot of the countertrend is simply Independents and Democrats who went for Reagan and drifted back to Clinton, rather than Republicans switching colors. That does happen, but it's a rarer and much lower key phenomenon. For most party changers, leaving the GOP isn't a case of leaving a tribe, or losing a faith or an identity, though.

The left tends to be a religion, an ethnicity or an identity. People leaving it tend to choose another faith or tribe or way of thinking about themselves. Those who were conservatives when young (though not exhibitionist Young Conservatives) tend to be more low-keyed. Changing party affiliation for them is more like getting a new car or coat than a new life. Even so, very few do switch, though they may become more apathetic about politics.

[beckett]

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip little by little at a truth we find bitter. Liberalism flatters its adherents by telling them they are morally superior. A superior person is usually quite lax at self-examination.

Only after I began to appreciate the battle between good and evil that raged within my own breast did I begin to reject the pollyannish, simplistic account of human nature and, by direct logical consequence, economics so central to leftist politics.

Since smug self-satisfaction is unlikely to ever go out of style, to be left-liberal will continue to be trendy, especially among the young and ivory tower intellectuals. I believe it was Orwell who said that no one will ever know the crimes committed in our time through the fear of being thought conservative.

[Sally II]

I just wanted to add, during my brief experiment acting like a liberal, I was lucky enough to have a wise, intelligent brother to keep me in check. Every now and then I'd go on some rant: "People are suffering. There is so much misery and equality in the world. It's just not right!" And if he wasn't pointing out that things were actually better than they've ever been in history, he would ask very calmly: "So?" It may sound kind of silly, but his calm, curt "So whats?" did more to keep me in check than anything.

[YourAdHere]

In 92, I didn't vote for Clinton or Bush Sr., I, gulp, voted for Perot. So in essence, I guess you could say I voted for Clinton.

Republican ever since.

P.S. - I was in college at the time. You do the math!

[Tribune7]

You know, I was a Dem in college and I don't think my beliefs and values have changed all that much.

On the other hand, my awareness has increased. I have come to conclude that the Democratic Party is a corrupt, vile, evil organization which must be stopped.

While I often get annoyed at the GOP, I don't see any comparision between it and the corporate sickness that calls itself the Democratic Party.

[dogbyte12]

I was a liberal democrat before... Now I am a raging moderate independent. I hate labels though. One of the absurdities of this country is that two major parties can encompass the broad spectrum of people's beliefs. Right now, I would be more republican than democrat, but I pick and choose, depending on issues and candidates.

I guess where I differ from some here, is that I haven't taken the leap to the paleo side of conservatism. I like Jack Kemp. I dislike Jesse Helms. I like Ronald Reagan, I dislike Phil Gramn. I think it is more temperment than philosophy. I am attracted to the sunny side. I am a white man, but I ain't angry. I have a great wife, great job, wonderful church, and a nice home. Life is pretty darn good, and I would like it to stay that way. My 401k is in the tank, but on the balance, I would rather have a positive growth type candidate, like George W for example, than somebody weaned on a pickle.

[lavaroise]

There is a brand of voter, the majority, who are apolitical for the most part, they just listen to what the guy says and they vote that way. These people unfortunately democrats like to target. Ever wonder why dems are so negative and hateful and point to their greatness and the weakness of oponents? Look no further than to target these people. So many conservative looking people have voted for Clinton the first time after Bush got on their nerves by saying the economy was good while people were being laid off. Then they voted again for Clinton because of the economy. In Nazi Germany it was the Jews stupid, in America it is the economy stupid, though all of us know it is terror, nukes, communists and 911 stupid.

My heart is essentialy to the right and conservatives since at the basis I know the sinfulness of all ideas of man, but often my mind is liberal. This is because the mind is naturaly curious of any new thing, new idea, new fad and new progressist way. Liberals are terribly mindful and remindful of everything. They are neurotic, greedy and phobic, yes those using the homophobe label are themselves phobic about any deviation from this line of thinking. They are truly bipolar frightened creatures married to strange gods obliging them to take so many risks and ridiculing themselves. They have not seen yet the light, that between elation of drugs and paranoid let down and relapse, there is this God telling them they need not worship this nonsense.

What is frightening in the end is how liberals push people to marry opinions and the opinion makers as a result. The CEDAW at the UN is just such an example of a group urging unappologeticaly and proselytising permanent unconditional unappologetic divorce from the "old" ways (another racist term against conservatives), yet demands that these people marry and bear the yoke of the unappealable CEDAW and UN.

Is the road to hell paved with good intentions? Well, one might say that indeed since the will to risk comes from an impetus to gain, and often, gaining most, this greed for good intentions is verily leading quickly to hell.

[Stultis]

My family is predominantly Republican (Mom nearly divorced Dad when he voted for LBJ over Goldwater) but I was never really a true believer until Reagan.

I very nearly voted for Carter over Reagan, believe it or not. I excuse it on my youth (it was my first election) but as my father owned a small construction business I should have been more cognizent than I was of the debiltating effects of Carter era policies -- double digit inflation/interest rates/unemployment, "malaise," the general attitudes of capitulation and helplessness -- than I was.

It always floors liberals when I tell them the following, but it is the absolute truth. I became a partisan Republican because of a deep concern about global poverty (which I still have). It was the incredible advances in poverty reduction of the Reagan/Thatcher era that got my attention. I actually started to listen to Reagan, read about the economic and political philosophies that he and Thatcher were advancing, and began to understand the basis for their policies and why they worked.

[techcor]

Voted for Mondale in '84. Between then and the next election I saw:

1. Chief Justice Rose Byrd try to let a child molestor/murder get a new trial because the jury had thought him so sick they gave him the death penalty.
2. Dukakis say that he would welcome his wifes theoretical rapist/murder back into society after 7 years.
3.The Dems tried to pass "racialism" which was where black kids could only be adopted by black parents. This so reminded me of miscongeneation laws of the Nazis I vowed not to vote Dems (but I still didn't vote Republican).
4. On Rush's TV show I saw 2 video clips that froze my blood. One was Clinton at Ron Brown's funeral and one was Clinton cursing a minor aide out at his first Easter at the White House. What froze my blood is that it was only shown on Rush's show. No news show touched it. I knew the news media was biased. I just didn't realize how bad until then. I started voting Republican after that.

Rush is the only one that can rid us of the Clintons. He should write a book (Called "It will be known as "Scam-a-lot"). If he includes all the video clips he has of those crooks, it might convince enough people of how evil liberals are and how biased the media is. I hope somehow this post gets to Rush.

[lavaroise]

I might add that liberals are often motivating indirectly people to G_d. The reason is that we could become selfish self-sutaining creatures ignoring G_d or any god, theoreticaly, but by pushing us to do the wrong, away from G_d, to marry the intolerable and unreformable, they are creating the seeds of rebelion against that very goal. Where there was no energy for G_d, liberals created energy and motive for evil, and this momentum will be kept and shifted away to G_d ultimately, a momentum that would have never built up in the beginning on its own had they left us alone.

The runaway train wreck of evil and progressist liberalism is pushing full steam ahead, but many people are jumping off of it, leaving the ignorant stupid morons to their own sh!t and destruction. The devil was wrong indeed, getting into a beauty contest with G_d was sure to fail from the beginning. It is no matter of democracy, for democracy is another god of evil, but a matter of confinement vs freedom, definition vs. jurisdiction, yoke of slavery vs. appologetic liberty of consumption.

[agrace]

As a starry-eyed 24 year old I voted for Clinton in 92. Didn't know any better. Four years later I set out to vote for him again and my NY DMV voting registration never went through, so I didn't get to vote. Didn't push it either, although I now know I could have. A year later, I was DELIGHTED that the DMV voting reg program sucked so bad! :)

Just turned 34 and am more conservative every year, much to the delight of my dad.

I think you may have a point - I don't know anyone who has gone from conservative to liberal. However, I do know liberals who have become even MORE liberal but that could just be my ever-changing perspective.

[CyberCowboy777]

a person NEVER switches to Liberal

There is McCain....Politicians may not count though.