My first vote for president was for Republican-turned-Independent John Anderson against Ronald The Racist Piss On The Poor And Call It Trickling Criminal Reagan (though I obviously couldn’t have known all that then, but I had my grave concerns based on his campaign, which were proved right) and Jimmy Crack Corn Carter.
I was one of only 5.7 million people with a brain in the country that year. Imagine how different the country would be today if Reagan hadn’t gotten his filthy hands on the levers of power, but it went to someone with some common damn sense who wasn’t a racist pig and an economic moron (or an evil fucking genius, depending on your perspective).
I used to consistently vote for Republicans for law enforcement offices (D.A., Judges, etc.). When I first moved to California (from St. Louis, MO via Puerto Vallarta, Mexico), I registered to vote as an Independent.
Now you couldn’t get me to vote for a Republican if you told me you’d burn down my house if I didn’t. I loathe that craven, anti-Democratic, unAmerican, hate-filled, bigoted, racist, fiscally irresponsible, downright dangerous party as much as it’s humanly possible to hate something. And I will fight to the bitter end to see them destroyed.
Started liberal, stayed about the same. I’ve moved on some issues (from pro- to anti-death penalty, anti- to neutral on affirmative action) in one direction, but have also softened a touch on stuff like gun control (you may have your hunting rifles and shotguns, I suppose) and economics.
I also feel like my relative position shifted. Part of this was going from Orange County (where I felt like a left-wing radical) to Berkeley (where I was accused of being a “Reagan Democrat”).
Thanks to a father who made Mussolini look crimson and a mother who feels that Orin Hatch is “soft,” I started my political views as what I considered “moderate” which 96% of people would believe to be on the fringe of ultra conservatism.
I’m proudly liberal now, albeit one of the handful of fiscally conservative Democrats. A couple of decades of life in a country where large enterprises and government are not only in bed together, but share the same nightgown, I’m convinced that “pro-business” is another way of saying “you pat my back and I’ll make sure that those pesky private citizens pay for your country clubs, one way or another.”
Was raised in a household that subscribed to The Nation. Entered college as a radical left-winger. Voted for Ralph Nader during November of my freshman year. Later on began reading books and studying issues that are never mentioned in public schools or universities controlled by the left. Read up on the effects of government policy in housing, transportation, agriculture, and many other areas. Started to pay attention and noticed how leftists were unwilling to seriously defend their own policies and preferred turning everything into a name-calling match. Left that end of the political spectrum and became a libertarian. Will vote for Gary Johnson this year.
I started out fairly conservative (although more a libertarian type of conservative, but anti-abortion because of my Catholic upbringing.) I would have called myself a Republican up until I was about 20. Even listened to Rush Limbaugh daily, bought his books, that sort of stuff. My optional essay for admission into college was centered around him. I feel quite embarrassed in retrospect.
I started moving to the left when I met a loud, argumentative guy from Queens my freshman year in college. We were like fire and water when it came to politics, and our arguments seemingly ended in stalemates. But I thought about his points long after our debates were over and began to realize that my own belief system was closer to a liberal one than a conservative one–it’s just that I never had the opportunity to meet liberals growing up to really understand them. Chicago Democrats, at least in my working class neighborhood, weren’t liberals. They were labor Democrats, at best.
So, in a span of about two years, I moved from being a Rush Limbaugh listening Republican, to a fairly strong liberal, bordering on socialist. (Note that I do not say Democrat, although that is the way I happen to vote.) Currently, I’ve retreated a little, and am in some weird hybrid place between liberal and libertarian, in terms of fiscal matters. In social matters, I’m staunchly libertarian (as liberals are.)
I was pretty doctrinaire libertarian (small-l) through high school until I realized two things:
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[li]The GOP is, and was, socially conservative: Pat Buchanan and Jerry Falwell and Rick Santorum mean more to the Republicans than limited government and increased liberty ever will. I absolutely cannot stand a party with that ideology.[/li][li]Totalizing political philosophies are a problem, not a solution: We don’t know enough about human psychology to be able to create a single political philosophy that predicts all problems and allows us to head them off. Libertarianism offers that, and it is wrong because it is too simplistic.[/li][/list]
So now I’m a moderate progressive, meaning I still don’t really have a party to belong to but at least I’m not trying to read things into the GOP that are patently not there. I vote Democratic while realizing that they’re, at best, center-right in terms of the policy they actually implement.
I went with, “moderate, became more liberal.” I was raised kind of religious-right-ish, but I was always kind of a non-conformist. And once I broke the “Democrats are evil” programming, I was only somewhat conservative in my own opinions.
I think we need to acknowledge that both right and left have flaws, and that each gets votes out of a mix of voters’ conscience and voters’ selfishness.
But the right-wing in my country doesn’t seem to have much in the way of redeeming values. They’re not even conservationist! Some “conservatives,” hmph!
I’m not sure. The main things making me a conservative were anti-abortion feelings and homophobia. Those have changed radically. But I’m not sure if I ever held any other positions of conservatism. I do know I’ve always supported unions, and that I’ve always thought greed was wrong, but none of that really entered the picture when picking a political position.
I did register as a Republican, and, while I wound up not voting at 18 due to confusion about where I should vote (at my hometown or my college town), I was going to vote for Bush, and technically am officially a Republican.
I think it’s safest to say I went from an uninformed moderate conservative to a pretty solid liberal, approaching socialistic thinking (i.e I think socialism is a good but unattainable goal).
I started out as a conservative, became more liberal step by step, then pulled back in a conservative direction. The SDMB encouraged my rightward path.
My family was Republican: I began trending left when I was 14 and completely the process in college. I registered as a Republican at 18 and re-registered as a Democrat in my early 20s. Oddly enough my older brother has a similar experience, independent of mine – we’ve never discussed the matter. (Actually though, he never drifted as far left as I did: the Democrats are pretty centrist after all.) I tacked towards European centrism over the next few years.
I have two halves: one is compassionist/activist. The other values rational discourse, careful investigation and professionalism. The second half has been reinforced by my experience on this message board, perhaps to the detriment of the first half. In today’s political environment there is no conflict between the two perspectives. A 1970s and 1960s environment would produce a conflict – think about radical feminism or proposals for a redistributive tax structure from a Rawlsian or even radical perspective. In the US today, the center is so far away from those controversies that they are basically irrelevant. The great bulk of the nuttiness -the crackpot supply sideism, the attempts to decimate the US credit rating- is on the Republican side of the aisle.
George H.W. Bush is a decent example. He was a pro-choice Republican who coined the term “Voodoo Economics” to apply to Supply Sideism. He lacked a spine though, so he later pitched his tent under Reagan. Heck, during the 1960s and 1970s there were even liberal Republicans. If they existed today, I would give them a respectful hearing, but over time they were drummed out for insufficient lunacy.