Former GOPers and Freepers, what finally pushed you over the edge?

[devilgrrl]

I know that there are several ex-GOPers and Freepers about. What straw was it that finally broke the camels back where the GOP and right are concerned? I'd love to hear what you have to say.

Thanks.

[mestup]

1. I voted for Ronald Reagan.

But I don't think I qualified as a GOPer or a Freeper. As a young voter I voted the way my parents did, which was probably standard for many.

Ironically enough, it was during his administration that I started to question everything around me. The Christian Right was on the rise. I was SHOCKED when Ronny fired the air traffic controllers.

Sad to say, my early votes were based on knowing absolutely nothing about our economy, social structure, or the political forces at work in the media.

[NorCalDem]

2. It's alright, you didn't really "mestup"

you were too young to know better. That doesn't make you a Freeper in my mind, you're cool with us here.

We have all done something stupid in our lives once, but what makes us good people is when we grow up having learned from that mistake :)

[mestup]

4. LOL! I haven't mestup any votes since then, that's for sure!

[Nothing Without Hope]

3. I think that's quite typical. Young people often start out conservative

because they don't have enough experience to see through the lies and propaganda. They're very susceptible and only catch on by degrees later on. That's the way it was for me too.

[converted_democrat]

10. Bingo!!! I agree 100%!!!!!!!!

I grew up in a conservative household, and I did not know anyone associated with the Democratic party until I was in my late teens. All my relatives, all my friends, everyone I knew chugged the koolaid.

I changed for a number of different reasons. I moved out of my parents home when I was 18, and that was when the change began. I didn't make the complete change (changing voter registration) until about a year ago. (I'm 26 now) The more involved I became in politics, the more I realized I was being lied to. I would go to fact check something O'Reilly said, and figured out that he was either lying, or just making shit up. So, I started checking everything that was coming down the party line, and low and behold, there were so many lies. Everything that I had built my world view on, did not really exist.

I started coming here, and realized I liked the people. I found people here that I could relate to, and people with values that were just like mine. I'm a bleeding heart, and I'm proud of it. I value people over profit, and I'm proud of that, too. I have changed alot, but it never would have happened without DU. DU helped me find me, if that makes any sense.

[FreedomAngel82]

11. Not me!

My parents both used to be republicans (my mom isn't one anymore)and I just did my own research and I'm a proud liberal. So this young person (I'm twenty-three) didn't start out as a conservative. Heck no.

[Nothing Without Hope]

19. In high school I admired Barry Goldwater. In college I protested the Viet

Nam war. Once you start really looking instead of uncritically accepting the propaganda you grew up with, the truth isn't hard to find. It's a painful learning process, to find you were so betrayed and that the world is not so safe and orderly or the leaders, so high-minded.

[Ready4Change]

5. Link

[NorCalDem]

6. R4C, what is this picture of, or where is it from? Just curious! n/t

[Tennessee Gal]

9. Brownshirt Republicans disrupting vote count in Miami/Dade

2000 election

[NorCalDem]

15. Damn, that's a good one!

I'm shocked that I had not seen that picture before. Wasn't a DU'er then, so it must have slipped through the cracks!

Thanks

[Ready4Change]

20. Thanks TG.

TG is correct.

I looked at that picture in 2000 and I though "Either you trust and believe in democracy and the American people, or you don't." These people don't.

These people, effectively, sang "God Bless America" while firing a bullet through Uncle Sams heart. They stormed that building and ended a states legal vote recounting process.

Right there, in a 561x361 .jpg image file, is the murder of the United States of America.

[FreedomAngel82]

12. I remember that and

I was so pissed off when I found out about that! :mad:

[newswolf56]

7. The side-switchers I know can't really be characterized as...

"ex-GOPers and Freepers" because they were all Democrats to begin with -- every one driven out of the Democratic Party by the anti-working-class hostility that has been increasingly evident since the Vietnam Era. Some of the people ousted were in fact Democratic Party activists.

Here in the Puget Sound area, this hostility is palpable. It is expressed not only in history and rhetoric (NAFTA; CAFTA; destruction of the social safety net disguised as "welfare reform"; gun-prohibition whether real or proposed; etc. ad nauseum) but personally and at the precinct/caucus level too: by the elitist contempt with which the aggressively bourgeois "global economy" advocates view all the rest of us and (most of all) by the outspokenly nasty, calculatedly venomous hostility of the anti-gunners -- fanatics who without exception are (short of the Ku Klux Khristians) the most malevolently antagonistic, hysterically intolerant people I have ever met. It is not the slightest exaggeration to state that in much of this area, being pro-gun is the one unforgivable sin against "political correctness": it will get you shunned (and thus banished) from most local party organizations even if you are an activist one-hundred-percenter on every other issue.

Hence the statement, oft-heard in blue-collar circles (and especially in rural areas): "There's not a nickel's worth of difference between the Democrats and Republicans on economic issues -- but at least the damn Republicans will let us keep our guns."

What is bringing these former Democrats back to the party is quite simply the worsening economy: growing perception that -- at least until economic desperation and continued Democratic betrayal of working-class interests gives birth to a strong socialist third party -- the Democratic Party is America's only hope: however enfeebled a hope it may be, since only Edwards, Pelosi and Kucinich (all three anti-gunners and the latter two anti-gun fanatics) are addressing the economic issues.


Edit: bad topic sentence on 2nd paragraph.

[AlCzervik]

8. long, long ago i used to be a republican, not a hard righty mind you

but still a moderate, i think i was rebelling against my massachusetts "you will vote for the democrat no matter what" household, anyhow, the whole Clinton thing shook me, i couldn't believe they were doing to him what they were, i was embarrassed and pissed and thats what did it, plus i'm pro-choice and pro-gay rights so you can imagine how popular i was with the republicans i knew.

[sniffa]

14. ditto

i remember not Liking cLinton.. or hating him. when the impeachment ended, i was pissed!!! aLL that for nothing; for a fucking bj.

i was raised in the projects, by dirt poor parents, and a father who had been union most of his Life, as anti-dem.
i find it odd, and it's hard to expLain to DUers, but that seems to be the main poLiticaL stripe for 'townies'.

[AlCzervik]

17. see , thats why we get along so well, you my brother from another mutha

Damn, snap---you just can't make that shit up!
:+

[sniffa]

13. maybe going out on my own?

it wasn't necessariLy a snap turn, but more of a graduaL turn.
2000, was the first time i ever voted dem in a major eLection (the onLy time prior, in 96, i voted for a friend of mine in a democratic primary - edit: state senate eLection).

i just thought bush was a fucking joke that year. that was aLso the first year (aside from the 96 eLection i mentioned) that i voted in a democratic primary; i was torn between voting for bradLey or mccain... so i voted in the dem primary for bradLey (i've aLways been unenroLLed; stiLL am) since he was touting aspects that we're speaking so directLy to me at the time (stiLL).

when neither mccain nor bradLey won, the choice was obvious for me - gore. i never gave nader much of a thought. i remember being angry (outraged?) that he wasn't aLLowed in the debates, but i stiLL wasn't going to vote for him.

bush was such a fucking joke, and i never thought he'd actuaLLy "win" :puke:

i remember when he was instaLLed after the SJC ruLing, and i became rather outspoken at work (4 empLoyers ago) how much i hated bush; i didn't 'hate' him untiL he was instaLLed - shit, untiL them i stiLL considered myseLf a repubLican Leaning indy.
i remember saying that at my work (i hate bush) and a coworker quickLy responding, "what are you, a fag?"

i think that was the day i pretty much swore of the repubLican party. :puke:

it's weird - i aLways thought i was repuke, but i aLways caLLed myseLf, a 'weLd repubLican' as in, an extremeLy, sociaLLy LiberaL repubLican.

after the bush years, i wiLL never, ever vote for someone in that party. maybe, if one had the baLLs to speak out against this monstrosity i wouLd have reconsidered.

[Zynx]

16. I was a liberal Republican when I was young(younger than 12) and then

switched completely because I could stand the Republicans on the issue of crime and punishment anymore, particularly on the death penalty. That issue is a very important one to me. I believe very strongly in making the American justice system actually just rather than having the moronic mobs continually pushing for ever larger punishments.

[Piperay]

18. When Ronnie Raygun

and the RWingers took over the party, that did it for me. I voted for Ford but he was the last repug I ever voted for.