Quote from: red_dirt on May 18, 2015, 02:07:36 PM
I was born conservative. That is the natural state of man. I was living in SE Ohio when Goldwater published "Conscience of a Conservative."  Coincidentally, the Democrats were dismantling Ohio's industrial base. I had a ringside seat for that display.

My folks suggested I learn about the Democratic Political Machines of Boston and New York.
The MA set of grandparents drew close to the liberals. I concluded they were dupes and fools; they didn't like hearing that and wound up  hating me.  My mother shielded the rest of my MA relatives from me. I never met them.

I opened my mind in college and entertained the liberal argument, for a spell. Didn't last long. Seemed to me they were charlatans and losers, aiming to fill their ranks with other losers, to gain wealth and position by questionable political means. Thieves, truth be told. NYC government has been exempt from audit for almost 100 years, with inevitable consequences.

One problem with the U. S. Constitution is too many loopholes. In the very areas it needed to be made more bulletproof, it was made more vulnerable.  You just cannot let people make their own laws. You'll wind up with what we now have.

Ronald Reagan once said of his days in the Democrat Party,  "I was once a near hemopheliac Liberal; Bleeding fro causes ".  It's important to "Know your enemy" so well you could make his argument as well as he could' yet, see the flaw in his whole argument! 

I didn't know I was a conservative until the time of Reagan.....I never voted Democrat despite being from a Blue collar Union vote Democrat or die Family,however, I think my Father and his generation were likely more conservative than anybody out there today.

I think Hubert Humphrey was the first Democrat I remember and he seemed like such a pathetic wuss I just couldn't identify with the Democratic party.

I think around the time of CLinton I began to be more aware of my conservative principals and how the Democratic party had totally changed. By that time I had seen about twenty years of the Democrats contribution to society up close and personal...rampant crime, third generation welfare families, high taxes, failed social programs....idealistic liberals disgusted me thoroughly by about 1977

I realized I was a Constitutionalist (conservative) when I came home and saw, those we entrust with upholding our Constitution ignoring it, acting as if they are above the law, as if we who have put our ass on the line for our republic are serfs.

My earliest political recollections are from the 1952 Presidential race.  I was just a little girl, but was interested in the events.

I had one grampa that was a democrat and the other a republican.  The republican grampa followed all the political conventions on TV and was very much informed on the issues.   

The democrat grampa didn't know anything about politics and did not pay attention to political information or issues.  He just voted democrat!

So my earliest understand of the political arena was quite simple......

.... democrats are uninformed voters, and republicans are smart people that know what they are doing!

I inherited my republican grampa's passion for politics and NEVER considered myself anything but a true conservative to the core!

Quote from: kroz on May 19, 2015, 12:58:29 PM
My earliest political recollections are from the 1952 Presidential race.  I was just a little girl, but was interested in the events.

I had one grampa that was a democrat and the other a republican.  The republican grampa followed all the political conventions on TV and was very much informed on the issues.   

The democrat grampa didn't know anything about politics and did not pay attention to political information or issues.  He just voted democrat!

So my earliest understand of the political arena was quite simple......

.... democrats are uninformed voters, and republicans are smart people that know what they are doing!

I inherited my republican grampa's passion for politics and NEVER considered myself anything but a true conservative to the core!

Kroz you are anything but a conservative! You you islamaphobe you! I'm jesting of course. But leave it to the dimwits long enough, and I am sure that we'll hear that mislabeling libel of ya soon enough!

hmmm...  I was a Republican one day, Democrat the next day kind of a kid.  I concocted a 'personal' party in my head, then populated it with political personalities I admired from either Party. 

My sister created a song; Nixon's our man.  Kennedy's our dog. which the neighborhood kids and I sang a lot, so it was probably late 1959 when I realized I was excited for the Republican-convention.  Both sides of my family agreed that Democrats were 'communist appeasers' so their convention held no mystical allure.

Khrushchev was mean 'n scary, and Nixon had pointed a bullying finger into Nikita's chest.  (I found out a decade later, the two were good-naturedly ribbing each-other about something mundane and Nixon seized the moment with photographers around to make it appear he was scolding the Soviet leader.)

The next GOP-convention featured the Goldwater vs. Rockefeller dynamic... or the Western/Southern wings vs. the Northeast-wing.  -Which greatly resembled the RINO vs. actual-conservative tiff today.  I was 12 then.

I was raised by a very conservative father, One of my favorite uncles was Chairman of the conservative party in our county in up state New York! Registered as a Conservative In my first national Election (1972) and have never been able to kick my Conservative tendencies!