Sister Toldjah--always worth a read

Like many conservatives, she started out as a starry-eyed, poorly informed Democrat. Now a somewhat sassy, always well-researched blogger on the right. . . Sister Toldjah

Being a native North Carolinian, you’d think that by nature I’d have always been a conservative. Well, I haven’t been. I was a liberal from age 17 to right around the time I was 22. I got most of my info from the news outlets, rather than reading anymore in depth into the issues than that, which I think is one of the reasons I would have found myself voting for Mike Dukakis in 1988 – but I was 2 months shy of being able to vote that election year. Hadn’t quite hit my 18th birthday. Not to turn this into a liberal bias piece, but at that time when every single ‘mainstream’ source out there was liberally biased, how could I not have been a liberal? I complain a lot about liberal bias in the media for that very reason: because I know how influential it can be to those who don’t research the issues much outside of what they hear in the media. Mind you, I’m not saying that liberals aren’t grounded in their beliefs, just saying that some do form their political beliefs based on what they see in the mainstream media and I was one of those people.

The first vote I cast for president was for Bill Clinton in 1992. I even worked with the Democratic party in ’92 to help get him elected. Just a few days before his defeat of President G.H.W. Bush, Clinton swung into town and I worked that event, helping to get it set up. It was a cold November evening, and because I’d been there to help set up all day, I had a front row spot as he entered and exited the event, which was held outdoors at an uptown park. I couldn’t have been more excited – Clinton did that to people. He had a lot of charm, being a southerner, and he was “every man” to everyone, which is a big reason why he got elected. My parents were furious with me for voting for him! In any event, I made the switch to being a Republican back around 1994-1995. The change had been happening for several months – no one pushed me into it, it was a choice I gladly made. No one thing or person can be credited with helping me change – it was just a lot of things. There was a guy in college who really helped me see the light, though, who deserves some credit. Simply put, I just realized over time that I had more in common with Republicans than Democrats.

Sister Toldjah
I was a liberal much longer than she was (and am much older since she's about the age of my children). Mainly, I just wasn't paying attention. Well, that's just an excuse. I never looked beyond my liberal sources, plus I'd spent my working life in a cocoon--the university campus. But it was Clinton's second term where the worm turned and grew a brain and spine, but it wasn't until the primary of 2000 that I actually changed registration.

Being a Republican holds many frustrations, particularly their lack of cohesiveness and in-fighting. Foot-shooting and back-stabbing seem to be common sports. Strange, unelectable candidates (Newt, Trump, etc.) would be next on my list. Sex scandals galore while preaching nonsense about personal responsibility would be a third aggrevation. But they haven't created any internment camps for minorities, or created Jim Crow laws, or kept the lower classes down and out through perpetual poverty pimping, or played a recession into a decade long depression, to name just a few.