The Lifelong Republicans Who Love Bernie Sanders

[cal04]

Some conservatives are defying expectation and backing the Vermont senator.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-lifelong-conservatives-who-love-bernie-sanders/417441/

When Tarie MacMillan switched on her television in August to watch the first Republican presidential debate, she expected to decide which candidate to support.

But MacMillan, a 65-year-old Florida resident, was disappointed. “I looked at the stage and there was nobody out there who I really liked. It just seemed like a showcase for Trump and his ridiculous comments,” she recalled. “It was laughable, and scary, and a real turning point.”

So she decided to back Bernie Sanders, the self-described “Democratic socialist” challenging Hillary Clinton. MacMillan was a lifelong Republican voter until a few weeks ago when she switched her party affiliation to support the Vermont senator in the primary. It will be the first time she’s ever voted for a Democrat.

(snip)
These Republicans for Sanders defy neat categorization. Some are fed up with the status quo in Washington, and believe that Sanders, with his fiery populist message, is the presidential contender most likely to disrupt it. Others have voted Republican for years, but feel alarmed by what they see as the sharp right turn the party has taken.

[mdbl]

1. I don't see the Repug party taking sharp turn to the right

looks more like a sharp turn to the weird

[skepticscott]

2. You know what..fuck her

She voted for Bush/Cheney twice, McCain/Palin, Romney/Ryan, and NOW all of a sudden the Republican candidates don't appeal to her? It's the same people spewing the same racist, bigoted, hateful, warmongering filth that she's been supporting enthusiastically for decades. Reap what you sow.

Fuck her. She is the cause, not the cure.

[A Simple Game]

5. You're wrong, she is the cure. Democrats can't do it by themselves, they don't have the numbers.

We need to convert people like her and many millions more.

Other than the Presidency how have the Democrats been doing lately?

[skepticscott]

6. She's going to be voting all Republican everywhere else

on the ballot, so how again in she the cure? She's enamored with Sanders on a whim and could flip back to whoever the Rethug candidate ends up being with just as easily, with just as little reason.

[A Simple Game]

11. You make a lot of assumptions. So tell us, what is the cure if it isn't people like her?

Should Democrats start having more babies? How do you stop all the millions of defectors from the party? I know there are defectors because I'm one of them. I only recently came back, likely for a short while, to be able to vote in the primary next year.

[skepticscott]

15. If you haven't been voting Democratic

For every candidate in every election, you're part of the problem too. Start there if you want a solution.

[A Simple Game]

23. Another assumption, you're on a roll, where did I say I didn't vote for Democrats?

I vote for the most liberal candidate possible, that is often the Democrat.

I will however not lend my name to any organization that supports such conservative ideas and candidates. You however can do as you wish.

[skepticscott]

27. Where did I say you didn't?

I said IF you didn't, if you'd care to go back and actually read it. And of course, you just confirmed that sometimes you don't.

And speaking of assumptions, where did I ever say I lent my name to ANY organization? I simply refuse to help Republicans by my inaction or self-indulgence, something you seem to have no problem with. Some of us haven't forgotten that Nader voters gave us 8 years of Bush and Cheney by voting their "conscience".

[A Simple Game]

31. Oh good god, another Nader did it person. Nader stole nothing.

Gore won, everyone knows that, why don't you? And no, I didn't vote for Nader I voted for Gore. Not that it would have mattered who I voted for in New York, nor is it any of your business who I vote for.

And where did I say you lent your name to any organization.

Begone troublemaker, we're done.

[skepticscott]

32. Who said Nader "stole" anything? Or that you personally voted for him?

Certainly not me. You seem determined to make shit up in every post, though.

If everyone in Florida who indulged their "conscience" by voting for Nader had voted for Gore instead, we would not have had Bush v Gore or eight years of Bush/Cheney. It's as simple as that. And lots of Sanders supporters seem determined to repeat the same insanity in the next GE if Hillary is the nominee, not caring if they help a Republican to win, just as long as they can feel good about themselves.

[Bubzer]

16. You're making some assumptions of your own... like that there are millions of defectors.

I'm not sure what your baby talk is all about... this isn't the conservative cave, so that kind of talk isn't going to go very far here.
I hope you're not equating hillary's willingness to delve into corruption as being some kind of strength. It isn't. You can never fight corruption by committing corrupt act. She wouldn't cure the corruption in the white house.... she'd put it on steroids.

[A Simple Game]

22. Where the hell would anyone get the idea I was a Hillary supporter from my posts?

Candidates like Hillary are why I left the Democratic party 20 years ago. I came back this year so I could vote for Bernie in the New York primary next year and will probably go back to unaffiliated after that.

You can go to your conservative cave if you want, conservatives are why I left the Democratic party in the first place.

As for the baby talk, it's meant as sarcasm for the call for white Christians to have more children to combat the growing minority population in the United States. Democrats and Republicans are losing members at a large rate and separately both have less members than the unaffiliated voters.

I think you misunderstood my post.

[Bubzer]

25. You know what? I did misunderstand your post. I broke my own rule of no early posting.

That's what you get when you reply bleary-eyed and caffeine depraved to posts during campaign season. Too used to GDP I suppose...though, this being the Bernie group SHOULD have tipped me off that you weren't exactly coming to hillary's defense.

Sorry about that.

*chugs some coffee*

[A Simple Game]

30. Not a problem, been there, done that myself. n/t

[thesquanderer]

19. Dems that crossed over to vote for Reagan...

...basically changed the direction of this country for the next 30 years.

If Republicans who cross to vote for Sanders do the same in reverse, I'll take it.

We need votes, not purity tests. A lot of the population is potentially "fickle." These are the ones that decide elections, not the purists.

[noiretextatique]

29. +1000

[Admiral Loinpresser]

7. Bernie is the only cure.

If she votes for him that helps the revolution.

I have a question. In view of HRC's vote for the Iraq war, do you believe she is a permanent part of the problem? I don't. I believe she could become part of the solution if she would change her ways. We need to unite people, not divide them, imo.

[LiberalArkie]

17. My father had voted R in every election. But he was going to vote for Bill Clinton

but he died 2 days before the election. He was a moderate to liberal Republican. A Rockefeller Republican. He believed very deeply in a 2 party system. And since the South was all conservative Democratic Party, he became a Liberal Republican. But the party was moving away from him. He was going to vote for Clinton because Clinton was talking universal health care. Maybe this lady had her wakeup point that the Republican party had left her a long time ago. Kind of how the Democratic party left the Liberals a little bit ago. People wake up a different points. Some wake up when a pin drops on the floor some don't wake up until a car crashes through their bedroom.

[tecelote]

3. That's because Bernie is talking about Republican values from over 50 years ago.

A few clips from...

Republican Party Platform of 1956

- Our Government was created by the people for all the people, and it must serve no less a purpose.

- The individual is of supreme importance.

The spirit of our people is the strength of our nation.

America does not prosper unless all Americans prosper.

Government must have a heart as well as a head.

- We shall ever build anew, that our children and their children, without distinction because of race, creed or color, may know the blessings of our free land.

- We believe that basic to governmental integrity are unimpeachable ethical standards and irreproachable personal conduct by all people in government. We shall continue our insistence on honesty as an indispensable requirement of public service. We shall continue to root out corruption whenever and wherever it appears.

- We are proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs—expansion of social security—broadened coverage in unemployment insurance —improved housing—and better health protection for all our people. We are determined that our government remain warmly responsive to the urgent social and economic problems of our people.

- We shall continue vigorously to support the United Nations.

- Under the Republican Administration, as our country has prospered, so have its people. This is as it should be, for as President Eisenhower said: "Labor is the United States. The men and women, who with their minds, their hearts and hands, create the wealth that is shared in this country—they are America."


SO MUCH MORE:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25838

[Fantastic Anarchist]

9. To be fair ...

That is a whole other Republican Party. Ever since the southern strategy, the party of those principles doesn't exist. And to be fair again, the Democrats of today, bare little resemblance to the party of FDR.

The country has gone insane.

[tecelote]

13. Agreed.

This just shows how phenomenally off base we are. Our own party falls short.

[valerief]

14. Not insane. Fascist. nt

[LiberalArkie]

20. In the south most of the Conservative Democrats became Republicans and the liberal Republicans

that were fighting Wallace, Mattocks and Faubus became Democrats.

[A Simple Game]

4. In Bernie we have a candidate that can finally heal the partisan divide.

Bernie has the ability to counteract the divisions put in place on the 99% by the 1% that wish to rule us. We can finally be united against the real enemy of the Country.

Or we can have a woman run for President that will lose to any of the Republicans because the Republicans hate her, the unaffiliated don't want her, and many Democrats won't cross the street to vote for her.

Hard choices to make these days.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

8. “Things aren’t always black or white. The world operates in shades of gray.”

This is it in a nutshell.

[BeanMusical]

10. Kick and R

[treestar]

12. there are not going to be many of those

given what Republicans believe.

[Robbins]

18. Remeber

for years bernie has been getting crossover support in vermont.one poll among vermont republicans had him tied with Trump and
Carson.

Bernie's success is people view him as honest,he means what he says,and they believe he will work for them even if they disagree with him on some things.

[dae]

21. Good article, Read it this morning. Wonder how many

Repubs HRC will attract?

[sabrina 1]

24. He is a man of the people. He has so much crossover appeal because he

talks about the issues that people care about, regardless of their party affiliation and his authenticity comes across even to people who don't always agree him.

[bluestateguy]

26. Don't expect many of these votes to actually materialize on election day

I'd say the same to Hillary, Obama or Kerry or Gore.

A year or months before an election Republicans and Democrats often blow smoke about defecting at the ballot box, but it rarely materializes on election day when it's time to actually do it.

[MisterP]

28. there's plenty of divisions within the GOP--even more than in the Dems, I'd add

since the 1976 reshuffle the Dems are structured by "interest"--you have ethnic groups (quite disallowed in the GOP; often religious, have own media because the mainstream didn't allow it), greens, sex/gender groups (LGBT, women), blue collars and retirees (often white and bottom-line, drifting to GOP with their race-baiting strategy, but eminently recoverable if you don't give up on them and/or try to merely pander); so it's like Neapolitan ice cream, with regional and sectorial leaders and then a national-party apparatus

but since 1988 the DLC has said that the party's main problems are 1. isolationism and 2. cash flow: so it endorsed "smart" "anti-totalitarian" "humanitarian intervention" and pledged itself to the clever, hi-tech finance, IT, service, and entertainment industries; unlike the GOP it wanted intelligent constituencies at the top level and intelligent interventionism

since 2002 it's definitively seized the top of the party and meddled in primaries (even blocking higher-polling candidates, or going third-party altogether as in CT), and yet many in the chattering classes even say that Pelosi and Obama purged the party's right wing and that's why it's lost since 2010!

in the late 70s Reagan used his personal connections to forge four emergent groups into his new GOP: 1. warmongers (Cold Warriors, the MIC, Birchers like Ollie North and that gaucho Singlaub), 2. right-libertarians (Kochs, Hunts, survivalists, suburban goldbugs angry that they have to share their de facto subsidies, Heinlein fans), 3. Big Business (Kochs and MIC and Heinlein fans a-plenty--but also the Silkwood-murder types), and 4. religious right (populist or capitalistic-populist, perhaps the easiest to peel off to the Dems): each of these could be a party in its own right and often does takeover attempts (hence the RNC's fractured weakness after Gingrich's strongman 1994-99 era)--I mean, they each have their own book presses and TV shows; so the party's bosses are more clearly calling the shots, and you can hear the rhetoric appealing to these four nuclei in each Pub speech (plus of course race and the boiling resentment of a working class abandoned to pinkwashed neoliberalism)