I have come clean in the past, and I will again here out myself: I used to vote Republican. At least once in my life, I even voted the straight freakin' ticket. I am pretty much their target demographic from the 90's. I'm well off, middle-aged, stock investor, worked for start-ups and started my own business in the past; wife owns her own business, Texan, Christian, etc. My representative Sam Johnson was a former POW who made it a point to be involved in the reddest of red districts where I live, and generally voted the way I would have on issues I agreed with. I donated to his campaign fund, but I don't think I ever wrote him a letter.
I voted for G. W. Bush in 2000, and was quite happy to see him win after a long, drawn-out battle in Florida. I was also happy to see him strike Iraq with shock and awe when I heard that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and was working with the terrorists to provide them eventually with Nuclear weapons that he was surely building.
I promise this gets better below...
As the war dragged on for what seemed like days, weeks even, I became very anxious about those chemical and biological weapons. When would Saddam unleash them? As troops approached Baghdad, I worried, would he make it his last stand to use them then? What about the dreaded Republican Guard?
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When troops arrived in Baghdad relatively unscathed, I knew immediately that it was all bullshit. Where are my WMD? I didn't need to wait until our troops failed to find them to know it was trumped up. Couldn't Saddam find them? I didn't wait for Katrina. In 2004, I voted for John Kerry, and have not yet looked back. Even Sam Johnson, whom I used to respect, has drunk the kool-aid too much for me. I literally couldn't believe the positions he was taking on torture and whatnot. I wrote letters. I signed petitions. He responded thus: "9/11! 9/11! Terra! Terra!"
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A couple of weeks ago, when Hillary was still inevitable, a woman from Johnson's internal pollsters called me, and she seemed to assume that I was still "one of the boys." I assumed they got my name from Johnson's donor list. First they greeted me with "some information you might not know" about the important work that Johnson was carrying out on my behalf, and then they asked me the one internal polling question that they were calling about: "Do you trust Hillary Clinton to be the Commander-in-chief of our troops?"
I answered honestly - "Yes."
The lady on the phone was clearly shocked. After a pause, she said, "You dooooo??? So are you going to vote for her?!?"
I said, "If she is the Democratic nominee, yes."
Stunned, she thanked me for my time, and I imagined her going back to her colleagues with mouth open, trying to figure out where they had gone so wrong to lose donors. I hung up the phone and laughed maniacally.