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Conservatives: Born or Made, What’s Your Story?

By: Common_Cents (Diary)  |  May 25th, 2011 at 01:45 PM  | 

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It’s always interesting when talking to fellow conservatives a bit about their background and how they arrived at their thinking. Was there a eureka moment when the scales dropped from your eyes? I think a little insight might reveal some common threads in how to appeal to even more people that have not truly discovered conservatism.

I grew up small town/suburb middle class with a stay at home Mom and small business owner Father. They didn’t talk politics much around me and Mom tended to vote D and Dad, probably voted R.

My interest in politics picked up in college with Ross Perot doing his talkin turkey to the hard workin ‘murrican people with the pointer and charts. Have learned a lot since then.

What is your story and what was your eureka moment or journey that led you to where you are today?

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  • Common_Cents
  • http://www.barrypopik.com barrypopik

    It’s far easier for me to explain D vs. R than liberal vs. conservative.

    In upstate New York (well, Rockland County) where I was born, we had Congressman Ben Gilman (R), Governor Nelson Rockefeller (R), and Senator Jacob Javits (R). Although these Republicans were by no means what we consider conservative, they all impressed me by being strong on Israel. This was just after the 1967 War, heading into the 1970s. Democrats were a lot of hippie losers I just couldn’t relate to. That choice wasn’t hard.

    I’ve never been purely conservative, always a a little libertarian. What pushed me over was Al Gore in 2000, John Kerry in 2004, and especially Barack Obama in 2008. The opposition made the lines clearer. I always felt that if any one of those people were elected president, this nation would face a disaster. Federal spending and the federal deficit would go through the roof, we’d lose civil liberties, and Israel would be betrayed. No surprises, unfortunately.