I just read Travis Arbon's diary about his journey from conservative Mormon boy to a progressive young man. Many things resonated with me. Our personal stories are one of the things that keep me coming back to Daily Kos, and it made me reflect on my own somewhat different political evolution. So I will continue after the ever-so-elegant thingamajig.
I too grew up in a very conservative family. Not Mormon, but Catholic, albeit not very religious other than attending Mass each Sunday. But very Republican. While Travis' mother quietly voted for Clinton, I believe I had one grandparent who quietly voted for FDR. To my knowledge, that was the only time anyone had strayed from the fold.
Fortunately, it was too early for truly hateful right wing talk radio (it was the early 60's); I only recall hearing Paul Harvey in a smoke filled car. Years later I realized that I was not inherently prone to car sickness as long as nobody was smoking. But I digress.
I knew that Ike was too liberal for us; Taft had been our guy. John Birch literature was around but I didn't really know what it was. I knew that anyone protesting the war was a coward and probably a Communist. I knew that union members were lazy and overpaid. Dad actually stopped at the A&P just to buy grapes during a UFW protest. We had to turn the TV when the Smother's Brothers came on and OMG Jane Fonda was evil incarnate.
But my family was also pragmatic. When a moderate Republican was nominated, they would support him (it was seldom a her, after all).
Politics was always interesting to me. I loved going door-to-door distributing literature at election time; Mom was a precinct delegate. I loved going to the polls on election night to watch them record the numbers off the old mechanical voting machines and calling them into GOP headquarters.
I was a bit of young political geek, and the first "warning sign" that I would become the black sheep of the family was at the 1968 county Republican picnic. Rockefeller was running against Nixon. I sat down with literature from both campaigns and read it all. I announced to my mother that I did not like that Nixon guy and that Rockefeller seemed much better. I had my "Rocky Can Win" and "Rockefeller in '68" buttons on. My mother's reaction was somewhere between amusement and nervousness. I recall that she told me that Rockefeller was "not really a Republican" and that we didn't support him, but I steadfastly kept my buttons on.
Years later she recalled that event, and said that it was an early warning sign that my philosophy was going to turn out vastly different from that of my parents.
For years, even before I could vote, I considered myself a moderate Republican. I was socially moderate, environmentally concerned, and fiscally conservative. A supporter of Jerry Ford (the home town boy). I was thrilled when Rocky became VP. I was 18 during the 1976 convention and election, and was crushed when Carter won.
I was a volunteer at the GOP convention in Kansas City, and I recall arguing with a young Reaganite. She said that she would have to support Ford if he were the nominee but would do so grudgingly. I, on the other hand, said I would not support Reagan as I considered his stands to be further from mine than Carter's. She was naturally very angry with me, and I guess I appeared to be the dreaded RINO. When I made that statement I began to wonder where I really fit in.
I won't go into my rather rapid abandonment of the GOP after that. Suffice it to say that by the next major election I voted for few, if any Republicans. I had also gone to college and come out as gay, and my entire world was very different.
What makes me so sad, and nervous about our political environment, is that fact that my initial political home exists only in the history books - the moderate northeastern and midwestern Republicans have vanished like a mirage. We hear people mention from time to time that the venerated Reagan would be too liberal for today's Republican Party. Similarly, Jerry Ford who is so widely respected in my native West Michigan would not stand a chance of being elected there today. It's really sad, and certainly one of the major reasons for the gridlock in DC.