- Joined
- Apr 25, 2010
- Messages
- 80,422
- Reaction score
- 29,077
- Location
- Pittsburgh
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Independent
Part of my ideological switch was when I finally grasped that as a Republican I was voting for policies which were hollowing out the middle class and also voting for a party which worked against a social safety net for the people it was pushing from middle class down into the ranks of the working poor.
The party which helped the CEO's of the Wal-Mart culture get richer and richer while creating jobs which paid so little that employees increasingly needed to rely on government assistance, but at the same time the party was condemning those people who needed to rely on government assistance.
This shift of my understanding was started by a pro-union Republican who got trashed (and called a RINO/liar) by people at the forum I was at in 2010. It was slowly reinforced by Elizabeth Warren, Occupy Wall Street, Obama in his better moments, and eventually Bernie Sanders.
So as the GOP made it clearer and clearer that they weren't really about fiscal responsibility -- that the Tea Party was a Trojan Horse to get politicians elected to push far right social agendas -- it made it easier for the progressive ideas I had picked up to start taking hold. And then when the GOP did things like vote against programs to help veterans, because they didn't want to give Obama a win, and THEN when they let the xenophobic Trump become their frontrunner, I left the party and no longer had the GOP label to put restrictions on the progressivism which was taking over.
So, that's one example of how someone can switch: become aware of the bad effects of the policies I had been voting for, and then as the party went further to the right it made it easier to admit to myself that I had been wrong before and needed to embrace a different path.
If the GOP had stuck with moderation and with investments in education and infrastructure and practical approaches to protect the environment, I might have stayed moderate. But GOP pragmatism has been replaced by far right extremism (and science denial) (and poor people being convinced to praise the rich people who were exploiting them and convinced to demonize those who were trying to help) and in response I have moved further to the left than I ever thought I'd be comfortable with.
so in your own words you are saying you switched because in your view you didnt have a solid understanding of what your party was about.
so my question is if in your view the GOP was they did too many things to serve themselves, even in cases where it would have been good but didnt want to give the other team a win) are you saying you feel the you switched to the dems cause they never do that? because if not again i would have to ask why the complete switch and point out thats the part i see has part of the problem.