Why I Was a Republican

This whole election cycle has had me thinking a lot about my own politics, trying to figure out why I ever thought I was or should be a Republican. I had to dig really deep to come to some understanding of this on a personal level.
I guess some of what I figured out applies to a lot of people. You hear so many people say they would rather die than support a (fill in the blank). They throw out the terms "liberal" or “conservative” as a negative adjective. Two perfectly good words we have reduced to gutter language. 

Supporting a party that for the most part works against your own self interest. That's the kind of thing that just doesn't (or didn't) make a lot of sense to me. I can understand someone supporting a party when the policies that it espouses would be a direct benefit ....it is the others who seem to go into the voting booth suffering from what amounts to political schizophrenia that I wonder about.

So why did I spend so many years thinking of myself as a Republican? I think if you go deep into my genealogy the answer would be Abe Lincoln. LOL, Yes, seriously, the 16th President and founding father of the present GOP is the reason. The buck stops there. Him, and the genetic predisposition of the Robinson's to hold "Tradition" in very high regard. The early GOP being the party of the victorious Union forces....and darling of the GAR, and the wavers of "the bloody shirt". Isn't it funny.....even after more than 100 years the GOP is still the waver of the "Bloody shirt" (using 911 as the excuse for a power grab, for every policy you want to create or change or dispense with).

First there was great-great-great grandpa Robinson....an Abolitionist who before the Civil war was active in the Freedom Party.   Being of some local political importance, we can assume he was or certainly would have been a Republican had he lived beyond 1866 although many of his beliefs would have been considered quite liberal at the time.  His son, great-great grandpa, was a Veteran of that bloody conflict which ended slavery, a member of the GAR and no doubt a Republican. The Robinsons of that era were big on tradition...family reunions, GAR Conventions (I think they were called encampments) and that good old fashioned religion. Great grandpa wasn't a Veteran of the Civil War but he grew up on the knees of those who were, so I'm sure he was well indoctrinated in that tradition.

Then came the Klan....defender of truth, justice, and the American (WASP) way....and (at least in Indiana) the owner of the GOP for several years, or did the GOP own the Klan? This was grandpa's era and in a lot of ways he is more the enigma than his forbears. The bloody shirt of the Civil War was greatly faded by the time he came along so more than anything I believe it was Tradition that kept him in the party. (and probably his mother, lol)

Even during the depression when the family farm was in peril and after he was able to save that land through the aid of one of FDR's alphabet programs he remained loyal to the GOP. During WWII while his son was serving in the South Pacific under commander in chief FDR he remained a GOP insider, serving multiple terms at two county positions, and as a state GOP convention delegate.

Being a Republican was "expected" in my family and I was certainly not the person to question that. I was loyal...not to Republican ideals and theories of governance...but to the family tradition. In truth I can’t say I really ever heard either my grandfather or father say why they supported the Republicans. In many ways it was the only party where I grew up. With only occasional exceptions I was to become a voter the GOP could count on for many years. It was always easier to follow tradition than to work at understanding the issues and learning how those issues affected me and my family. 

 These days the pace of life is hectic, and there is no shortage of both important and complicated issues that require a lot of time to investigate all sides and to gain any sort of understanding of the whole picture. Being an informed voter is hard and I understand why so few are. Politicians of all kinds (both the R's and the D's) count on us remaining uninformed and for that reason there are few independent sources of balanced information available.

That was, I think, how I became a Republican. I don’t think my belief system has steered to left as much as the Republicans have steered to the right over the past generation. The gap between where I stand and where the GOP stands has become too large to ignore. I would have to credit George W. Bush with creating the environment which has given me serious doubts about my prior blind allegiance to the GOP. That is fuel for another blog, another day.

I wonder how many others are like me; how many inherited their political beliefs and whether those inherited beliefs ever changed over time? It would be cool to hear from some other folks on that question.