HOW ONE DEMOCRAT BECOMES A REPUBLICAN

Me in 1981.

Evolved – How one Democrat becomes a Republican.
Brett

My first decade as an adult, and therefore a registered voter of the U.S.A. was the 1980’s. I graduated from high school in 1980, which was the year of the first election for which I could vote. I voted for Jimmy Carter for president in that election, probably the only reason why was because he was the democratic candidate. He was the incumbent and I can only admit that I had no clue as to whether he did a good job during his first term as president or not. I do remember that he was failing at getting some U.S. hostages freed from Iran in the Middle East, but I didn’t see as to how this was his fault. Politics admittedly was of little to no interest to me back in these earlier days. I didn’t watch much news on television and I read the sports and comics section of our local newspaper. If you told me that I was a clown I would have a difficult time proving you wrong. I remember I did read a lot even back then, but it had nothing to do with politics and more about the history of wars and music. Whether my self-education at this time was of value is questionable – maybe for trivia and not much else. It didn’t help me at all to make informed decisions about politics because I just thought politics was too boring, and therefore didn’t waste brain space on the subject.


He's in the Army now!


Shin Jo, Ahn, and I in South Korea

I spent a lot of the 1980’s as a soldier, first in the U.S. Army or later in the Army Reserves and National Guard. My boss or Commander-in-Chief was Ronald Reagan, a Republican. I don’t remember paying a lot of attention to his politics but I do remember that he was a “hawk” and he stood up to our enemies in the Cold War – the Soviet Union and China, and I respected him for that much. When I watched him speak he often made sense to me, so I couldn’t really find fault with him. That isn’t really saying much because I was still pretty ignorant when it came to politics. Meanwhile in 1984 I voted for Walter Mondale (liberal – democrat) for president. Walter got trounced by Reagan, who was our president until just into 1989. After the end of my enlistment into the regular army came in June 1985, I was having trouble finding a good job where I could strike out on my own and earn my own living. I worked a variety of laborer type jobs that were seasonal, low-paying, non-benefits type jobs. I remember at times commiserating about this situation with friends and even my father and blaming this all on the government and Ronald Reagan. It must be his fault right? It couldn’t be because I lacked experience for many jobs and I only had a high school diploma and a completed enlistment in the Army. I made myself a victim and didn’t take much (if any) responsibility for my own situation – I can see this now. I was also starting to notice that our local newspaper didn’t seem to have anything good to say about the Reagan Administration, or Ronald himself. Also I was hanging around the same old friends who all seemed content with our mediocrity. I was living below the poverty level but I didn’t see myself as poor or rich – I resembled and became content in my own environment. I should point out at this point looking back that I was definitely in no position to start a family and that wasn’t going to change unless I changed.

Those years spent in this laborer existence (1985-1990) I had education benefits coming to me for my service (VEAP – veteran’s educational assistance program) that I was in no hurry to use. The last thing I wanted to do was go back to school. I barely made it through high school due to lack of interest and a general bad attitude and I felt like I didn’t want to relive these days. I know I wasn’t necessarily physically lazy but I was mentally lazy – for sure. I have always been interested in electronics though and I worked in the electronics field while in the service, and even in the reserves and the National Guard. It was this interest in electronics that finally made me decide to try to make things better for myself and finally use my educational benefits. I enrolled in a local communications electronics program at our community college. Now I was a few years older and wiser and I decided I wasn’t going to squander this opportunity. I have always been smart enough that when I want to do well, I can do well. I always did well while I was in the regular army, and I had the attitude and motivation to do well in college, and college was more interesting to me which definitely helped.

I got a job right out of college to work at a local electronics factory as an electronics technician. It paid well and also had good benefits. This was in 1990, and I hadn’t had health or dental benefits since 1985. So I went without going to a dentist or going to the hospital when I got hurt for these 5 or so years. I did get hurt a couple of times where I probably should’ve gone to the hospital but I knew I couldn’t afford it so I healed myself – so to speak. So I was in this unfamiliar position of finally having some money, but I wouldn’t say this job was very secure. It is a union job which means there are seniority rights and I’m one of the low men on the totem pole. It was also around this time that I was at least starting to read about politics in the newspapers and magazines, but it was magazines like “Time” and “Newsweek” which were (and are) liberal publications. Plus I have always read “Readers Digest”, which is a little more on the liberal side as well. Other information came to me via “CNN” and the alphabet news programs (ABC, CBS, and NBC). Basically I was just getting reinforcement of the little political knowledge that had gotten to that point. So let’s add this all up… I got a public school education, read newspapers, Time, Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, People Magazine, watched many Hollywood movies, watched several mainstream news programs. Add to this I was a member of a labor union which give a lot of our union dues to democratic candidates and strongly encouraged us to vote “democrat” with various fliers and such. The end result is I received the same full blown liberal-democratic indoctrination that many people receive. I didn’t see this back then but looking back I definitely see it now. I was really starting to notice the bias in the media back in the early 1990’s, but since it was biased toward the party I supported I guess I selfishly didn’t see it as necessarily a bad thing. I was slowly getting my education about how politics work in this county. The democrats – good, poorer, and more for the people. The republicans – bad, richer, more for corporate America, who is trying to steal us blind. I didn’t even know how to see the other side or even if there was another side. I still had a lot to learn about politics; in fact this was only the beginning.

So in 1991 our country was having a lot of trouble with a country called “Iraq”. Iraq was a country that we actually supported during their war with Iran in the late 1980’s, we supported them as the lesser of 2 evils. Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, decided to invade a small country just to their south called “Kuwait” and there was a legitimate concern that if nobody helped to stop their advance they would continue into Saudi Arabia and eventually Israel. Israel are our friends and Saudi Arabia supplies us with much of our oil. Our president George H.W. Bush got congressional approval and put together a multi-national coalition to stop Saddam, and managed to convince Israel from becoming involved, which would’ve probably started another World War if they had become actively involved. There was a legitimate fear that it would break-up the so-called multi-national coalition. This was also despite the fact that Saddam was lobbing scud missiles into Israel throughout this first Gulf War. There were those in the media and in the Democratic Party who were against our involvement in this war (even back then) and I couldn’t understand this at all. It led me to start to look more deeply into the party I had always voted for a little more. Doubt was starting to creep in for sure but not enough to where I didn’t vote for Bill Clinton in both 1992 and 1996 – yes I did, but by 1996 I would be completely fed up with Bill Clinton.

I should mention that in the first half of the 1990’s there really wasn’t anything like the internet, or blogs. We had personal computers which we thought were great, but they were very slow compared to computers today. So the main sources of our information continued to be liberal biased – so I can’t totally blame myself for remaining a Democrat as long as I did on myself, but it does mystify me looking back. The internet never really became a decent tool for information until the late 1990’s, and this began the time that my information about politics started to head toward some sort of balance. Also around this time Fox News came into existence and it was the only news station that tried to be fair and show both sides in our country. Before I take this little outline into the 21st century, I would like to mention a program that I watched on HBO about one issue that was very important and helped lead to my eventual evolution.

The program was about abortion. My opinion on abortion remarkably used to be that it’s a woman’s issue and it should be left up to them to decide whether abortion should continue to be legal or not. I didn’t think of it deep enough to see it as a “life or death” issue. After watching this HBO abortion special I changed my mind – it is a life or death issue and to see it any other way (like I did) is a total cop-out. I believe God, or my conscience, or both spoke to me and said “look at how asleep you have been – look at what you have ignored completely.” Abortion is murder – there are no two ways about this fact. It affected me like that, and the funny thing is that this abortion program was a balanced program. It showed both sides of the issue and it’s another thing that made me more aware that I am on the wrong side. Also around this time (1996) was the presidential elections and both Bill and Hillary Clinton constantly harping about the “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy”. I was by this time thinking to myself “what are they talking about – the media bends over backward to protect them and cover things up for them." Chinagate was happening and the media wasn’t reporting anything about this, yet when the Monica Lewinsky thing started happening they were all over that story – it was clearly a misdirection ploy. This is when I became all too aware that our mainstream media didn’t care about the sovereignty of our country at all. I was appalled by Chinagate, in which Clinton, Gore and their state department was selling missile secrets and technology to China for campaign contributions and other forms of influence. Not to mention the fact that they sold Taiwan out to the Chinese. It was also found that both Clinton and Gore received significant campaign money from other foreign countries as well for various favors and this is highly illegal – in fact it is treason. Our press took our attention away from this and put it on the Lewinsky Affair – and really everyone already knew that Bill Clinton was a complete horn dog. Also when these investigations were going on with Chinagate, Clinton and his underlings completely balkanized the state department, the CIA, and the FBI and made it so they couldn’t coordinate information with each other, and so every investigation would get stone-walled. It could be reasonably argued that this is the one main thing that led to the attacks on 9/11/2001 even being possible – due to an incredible lack of intelligence. Still to this day we don’t hear much about Chinagate, but go ahead and Google it sometime if you have any doubts.


Cheryl & I - 1997.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my wife Cheryl and her father Ian. They are both former Democrats who eventually became Republicans, but they did so way before I did. They were telling me things that at first I didn’t believe, but when I finally bothered to investigate them they were always correct. Plus I started using the internet more as a source for news. One website stands out for me among the many and that is www.townhall.com. It has brilliant conservative commentators and teachers who have given me a tremendous education. I have also read numerous books from the conservative side of things, which is only fair having read so much from the liberal side in the past. Bernard Goldberg has taught me and shown me about liberal bias in our media. Ann Coulter, The Limbaugh Brother’s, Burt Prelutsky, Cal Thomas and many others have shown me about the history of politics and the rampant hypocrisy of liberal-democrats, and often do so with much humor. Walter Williams, Larry Elder, and Thomas Sowell have taught me many lessons about economics, about race from a black-conservative perspective, and common-sense. There are many others – too numerous to mention them all since this is only an outline.

By the time of the election in 2000 I was a Republican and I voted for my first Republican for president, George W. Bush. It was a close election and his opponent Al Gore decided that it was a close enough election (it was decided in one state – Florida) that he was going to contest the results – all the way to the Supreme Court as it turned out. The Supreme Court didn’t overturn the results so Bush became the president and the liberals were ferociously angry about this result. I had already lost all respect for Al Gore and his behavior after the election just made me more disgusted with him. I couldn’t believe he would ever have any credibility again. I always thought later that since Al Gore was behind the push for massive governmental regulations due to Global Warming, then I doubt that there is any substance behind his reasoning, due to fact that he (like the Clintons) has the character of a morally bankrupt low-life – the lowest common denominator of society.

I have read a lot of books about Israel and the Middle East. I’m sure some of what I read was true and other things are false. It’s an individual decision as to what is real and what is complete bull. I am much more sympathetic to the plight of the Israeli’s than the Palestinians for example. I have read enough about Islam and its history to know that it is not the religion of peace, but one of war and world domination by any means necessary. It became pretty clear to me the Republican Party viewed Israel more as allies than the Democrats, who was always looking to try to get Israel to make more concessions to help keep the peace in their region. This leads me to what happened to our country on September 11, 2001.

A group of terrorists from a Muslim group called “Al Qiada” and mostly Saudi Arabians guided by their leader Osama bin Laden high jacked 4 passenger jets and crashed 2 of them into both towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Another jet crashed into the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and another one was prevented by passengers from reaching its intended target (either the Capital Building or the White House), and it crashed into a farm field in Pennsylvania. More than 3,000 people lost their lives and the rest of us thought we had been attacked and were now at war. So essentially this was an attack against our financial center (Wall Street – WTC), our military (The Pentagon), and our government (White House / Capital Building). I remember thinking on this day (and I’m sure I wasn’t alone) that this is an attack and we are now at war, but at first we didn’t understand who our enemy was. Soon the media let us in on who Osama bin Laden was and his Al Qiada group. For a brief period – maybe weeks – our country was united. The liberals quit hating on our president (many of them still think he stole the 2000 election), and actually supported him for a short time. Our economy went downward and the airline industry was hurting bad for awhile because many people were afraid to fly. It affected me in the respect that at the beginning of 2002 I was bumped out of my job of working on satellite receiver-transmitters that went into several commercial jets, due to the downturn in this airline industry. President Bush started working toward making our country safer from more terrorist attacks by creating the Department of Homeland Security. Our FBI and CIA had the walls between them tore down so they could cooperate with each other again against possible terrorist threats.

By the time 2003 came around things were more back to normal and our economy was recovering. President Bush and his administration was working on getting United Nations support to build up a coalition to help with the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan (who supported Osama bin Laden and Al Qiada) and to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. It was suspected that Saddam and his Bathist regime was working toward and/or possibly had weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s). He was also a known supporter of Al Qiada, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Islamic terrorist groups who we considered a threat to us. Bush didn’t get as much help as he would’ve liked, we were not backed by the U.N. and several European countries such as Germany, France, etc. No help from China or Russia either. Our main ally was Great Britain.

Our Congress overwhelmingly voted for us to go to war against Iraq if they would not give up their WMD’s. Saddam saw that we didn’t have the coalition that we had in the first Gulf War so he was defiant, he didn’t think we would attack again – but he was wrong. After already fighting in Afghanistan against the Taliban and rendering them ineffective temporarily, we invaded Iraq in early 2003 for the sole purpose of removing Saddam Hussein from power and hopefully finding his WMD’s. It didn’t take long for our soldiers to take out Saddam Hussein’s regime, and we eventually killed his evil sons Usay & Quday, and Saddam himself was eventually found hiding in a hole in the ground and eventually executed. However we failed to provide adequate security within Iraq and it turned into chaos as a result. Many members of the religious groups within Iraq, the Shites and the Sunnis who initially were glad we liberated their country now wanted us out. Adding to this terrorist groups such as Al Qiada had entered Iraq and were fighting our troops and hindering our efforts to help Iraq rebuild and set up an infrastructure and a new government of their choice. There was regular suicide bombings and many IED’s (improvised explosive devices) which were taking their toll on the citizens of Iraq and our troops. I think I would be remiss if I didn’t point out during this time Israel actually considered Iraq’s neighbor to its east, Iran a greater threat than Iraq. The reasons why included they armed and financially backed some of the terrorist groups I mentioned before, more specifically Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran was also actively working to build a nuclear weapons program while regularly threatening Israel that they would blow them off the face of the earth once they became nuclear. So Israel has been looking to take action to prevent this from happening, with or without our help.

It didn’t take long (in fact it was before the 2004 elections) for the Democrats to make the war a political issue and to withdraw their support. I believe this lack of support and constant criticism undermined the war effort completely and it was absolutely treasonous. We were in a difficult war against terrorists who wanted us dead and they used it for political football – first they supported it but once we were there they backed out completely and complained it was a lost cause. This is when I completely lost any little bit of respect for liberal-democrats that I may have had left. The 2004 Presidential election ended up being between George W. Bush, and his democratic challenger John Kerry, a democratic senator who was one of many who voted for the war before he voted against it and giving our troops the support they needed. It was a close race that came down to the state of Ohio, but Bush was reelected. The liberal-democrats were absolutely outraged and they couldn’t believe they had lost again, despite betraying our country. How did they respond? By dialing up their hatred of the Bush administration and continuing to undermine our war effort in any way possible, even at times suggesting that we surrender because we aren’t making progress. They also kept harping about how we never found any WMD’s despite the fact that we discovered they had a nuclear weapons program and over 10K tons of weapons-grade plutonium, which is only used to make nuclear bombs. Fortunately we got our hands on it before the terrorists did. The war was becoming more and more unpopular because after all many here in this country only think we should fight quick wars, and they only have the attention span of gnats with even less resilience. So Bush’s popularity dropped and during the mid-term elections in 2006 the democrats gained control of congress. I have to give our extremely biased mainstream media their due, they are a formidable weapon for the liberal-democrats, and are constantly negative and attacking toward conservative-republicans. The democrats forced Bush to water-down his policies in return for their support to get congressional cooperation in continuing to fund the war on terror. In 2007 the war in Iraq was bogged down but General Petraeus asked for a troop surge which turned the tide on the war for us. Also the Iraqis were starting to side with us more again because they were getting tired of Al Qiada and other terrorist group’s heavy-handed presence there. Our troops are still in Iraq and Afghanistan and we are still fighting the war on terror, but the Democrats had to stop whining about us losing the war. Progress in Iraq was happening, infrastructure was being built, government was formed and elections happened. In late 2007 our economy started to slip toward a recession. There are many factors believed to be involved – just to mention a few – the price of oil/fuel skyrocketed to over $100 a barrel. The value of our currency (the dollar) fell significantly. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates artificially too low for too long. Large companies failed, banks and lending institutions, federal mortgage companies Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac who made risky loans to low-income borrowers that defaulted when the housing bubble burst also failed. The stock market plummeted which caused many 401K’s to nosedive (including ours). Unemployment increased and various other things which are related financially. Many blamed the Bush Administration but there is more than enough blame to go around – consumer greed, a democratic congress who creates the spending bills, the Federal Reserve, and ultimately the president who is the overseer.

The 2008 presidential election was between a moderate republican, John McCain, and a liberal democrat, Barack Obama. Barack Obama won and the congress is under total democratic control. So far the result has been massive spending, more jobs lost, less military spending, a headlong assault on our Constitution, and probably the end of capitalism and the beginning of total socialism, and the complete loss of individual liberty. If this seems hard to believe – wake up and look around. Call it a revolution or a peaceful coup – the results are the same. This is why democrats totally suck and need to be defeated.

I always try to remember where I started. Again I was a product of our government-controlled public school system, didn’t pay much attention to politics and anything I heard about it was from a liberal perspective – for years. The media which surrounded me was anti-male, pro-feminist, anti-religious, very liberal, anti-conservative, pro-union, pro-abortion, anti-business, pro-welfare, anti-war, anti-individualist, pro-gay, anti-marriage, pro-collectivist, etc. It’s no wonder that I was a thoroughly indoctrinated (apathetic) democrat, and it isn’t surprising that there continues to be many more of the same types of people. I can see how it happens having experienced it myself, so I have to remind myself to see things from both sides so I can understand people – from where they are coming from.

So as I mentioned we are at the point where the democrats have complete control of our government, but other than spending enormous amounts of our tax-payer (supplemented with loans from China) money to pay off supporters and special interests which they expect to help them remain in power – they are unable to get anything of any real substance done. This is because like what always happens when democrats get complete control, they are governing from the far left. In other words they are going for complete governmental control. Fortunately before it has gotten too far enough people are waking up and saying – no way! We are the bosses and the government is supposed to work for us. We don’t want the government to make healthcare decisions for us and to control our health care. We don’t want our president and congress to keep messing with our Constitution, Obama was elected to protect and uphold our Constitution. We don’t want our energy to be massively taxed; in fact we already think we are taxed enough. We want to keep our freedoms of speech and religion, and our right to bare arms. Our representatives in Congress are supposed to do what we elect them to do, not what will necessarily increase their power and keep them elected. The list goes on and on but the tide is turning, congress’ popularity is in the dumpster and Obama’s is falling rapidly because he is trying to be a king and not our president. He is a complete and total fraud, and more people are coming to this realization each day. The most alarming thing about Obama and the democrat’s congressional leadership is they couldn’t care less about our nation’s sovereignty. They would be happy just to let us be controlled by the United Nations as part of a one world government where all former nations are equal economically and influentially. No more exceptionalism for the good ole U.S.A., and of course our Constitution will no longer be necessary. Obama would still want to be the leader but perhaps he wouldn’t have to be concerned about such bothersome things as elections. For us (the people) we can forget individual liberties and freedom, we will just be subjects, like before the Revolutionary War. Obama is quickly losing his power, he is losing the support and confidence of independents, who helped him get elected, and even from his own party. Historically if unemployment is high and the people are taxed more – the ruling party will lose. Obama’s policies are shrinking the private sector and increasing the public sector (government jobs). Government jobs are paid for with our tax dollars, but the people who pay these taxes are paying more and many are losing their jobs – as a result they are becoming angry. Obama is basically toast and that is what’s great about our country is our system of checks and balances – whenever someone tries to take too much control they will be struck down into oblivion, and our pathetic mainstream media will follow them there.

I know I tended not to go into specifics too much. My goal was to keep this essay in a simple, outline form. However I have been keeping a blog about politics and religion that I really fired up starting from the start of Obama’s presidency. If it’s specifics you want they are here… www.bcfoley.blogspot.com

And that is about my evolution from being a democrat to becoming a republican, this is my evolution. Obviously some would maybe think I had it right the first time but I would just have to disagree.