Why do people switch parties?

I've always been curious about the reasons regular people, but most especially politicians, switch political parties. I'm sure there are many more, but Reagan switching from democrat to republican and Lieberman from democrat to independent come most easily to mind. I hear callers into CSPAN saying they've been loyal Democrats since XX year but are voting for McCain because Clinton is not the nominee and have heard avowed Republicans that say they are going to vote Obama.

Because they can? Parties change? People change? I dont really have a good answer why people will switch allegiences...

I missed being able to vote for Reagan in 1980 by 2 months. But since then, I always voted a strict Republican ticket. Because they were for business and I wanted to be rich, I didn't want to be middle class and really didn't care about the poor. Then in the early 90s, the religious right took over the party. I feared a theocracy more than being poor or middle class. I didn't change parties, hoping they would come to their senses and move back to their roots, so I threw my votes away on libertarian candidates. It didn't work. The republicans became tools of the neo-conservatives who leveraged the religious right to consolidate power. Now we have big government, huge deficits, constitutional decay, our soldiers policing foreign soils, a souring economy and zero energy plan.

I'm still a registered republican and vote in the primaries as one.

I have hope to return the party to its Goldwater roots, but I think it will take a landslide against them to get them to change.

I do have to love the folks who say "America is a Christian Nation." I'd like to know how they got to that piece of scholarly historical interpretation.

Last time I checked, the vision of the 2d Continental Congress was America was to be a God-Fearing nation, with an open door on what faith meant.

The last time I studied Constitutional Law, the Framers meant for America to be a God-Fearing nation, with matters of religion not to be inside the government (which is wholly different from "the wall between Church and State").

The idea that America does not need God would roll the Framers in their graves, time and again. How many of the Founders and the Framers were 33d degree Masons? God fearing, each and every one of them.

ETA: BTW, I switched from Democrat to Republican for the 1980 election. Another four years of Jimmy Carter? That wasn't a formula for success.

That said, I'll leave my acid test issues to myself.(This message has been edited by John-in-KC)

Last I checked, the framers wanted religious freedom, and for the government to not dictate theology.

I would say America is a Christian nation because throughout the whole of its history the vast majority of its population have been Christian. Judeo-Christian public celebrations have been an important part of the tradition of our republic since its birth.

As to consitutinal law. The Constitution as originally interpretted allowed states to maintain established religions. Connecticut for one did this until 1818.

After the 1780 Massachusetts required everyone to belong to a churh and pay a tax to support it until 1833.

Until 1877 members of the New Hampshire state legislature had to be Protestant.

Until 1835 North Carolina had the same rule, allowing only Protestants to hold public office. Catholics were allowed to hold office as well until 1876 when only atheists were barred.

I think we all know the Pilgrims and Puritans of New England certainly did not believe in religious freedom. They actively persecuted other beliefs in the early years of settlement.

So I don't know how far we can go to say America was founded on religious freedom.

Numerically, Christianity is the dominant religion for the entire planet. It's just the way things are. This is one reason I snicker when I read about Christianity being under attack or something along those lines. Hard to play the victim stance when you're in the majority.

As for switching, I'm like Gern. I was too young to vote for Goldwater but I campaigned for him. And I voted for Nixon...and was (along with the entire country) betrayed by him, bitterly.

The experience made me give up any party affiliation whatsoever. I don't seem to fit any of them anyway.

So for me the question is one that was the source of worry at the time of the founding of this country, why do we have political parties at all? They're kind of like religion - they seem to divide us rather than bring us together.

It is natural for political leaders in a democratic system which is based on winning votes to form organizations to assist this. If one group does this, the other is forced to match.

This might be considered Mr. Madison and the other framers greatest error. They hopefully ignored the fact that political parties were already forming in some of the states as well as the United Kingdom, and thought it they would not exist in the US.

Sorry packsaddle but your numbers are faulty worldwide Christianity comes in a distant fourth after Buddism, Hinduism, and Muslim

It is also faulty to say America is based on the Judeo Christian ethic because the only Judaism is what the christian church accepted and adopted from the Old Testament in the Christian Bible, the 10 Commandments for example which Judaism later expanded into 365 rules so you see there is truly only a Northern European Christian tradition in the founding of our nation, the Jews had very little to do with it. Keep your historical references accurate.

Sir before you admonish others to keep their references accurate, check your own. Your ranking of religions is very inaccurate.

Christianity is a clear first. There are about 2 billion Christians in total, about a third of the world's population.

Islam is a sold second, followed by Hinduism. And Buddism is not even close, not even 400 million. Far behind Christianity.

http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_religions

TheScout writes:

I would say America is a Christian nation because throughout the whole of its history the vast majority of its population have been Christian.

In the same sense that America is a white nation, sure. But I highly suspect the motives of people who say either.

As to consitutinal law. The Constitution as originally interpretted allowed states to maintain established religions.

And disallowed the federal government to do so.

I think we all know the Pilgrims and Puritans of New England certainly did not believe in religious freedom. They actively persecuted other beliefs in the early years of settlement.

So I don't know how far we can go to say America was founded on religious freedom.

They didn't found America, they preceded it; some of their less-than-admirable acts based on religious differences helped convince the actual founders like Madison that mixing religion & government isn't such a hot idea.

"In the same sense that America is a white nation, sure. But I highly suspect the motives of people who say either."

I don't know what this means.

Scout, your sources are very clear, you have to count the 1 billion Roman Catholics for your statement to be true, so the 2 billion you quote is not accurate and the current Roman Catholic Pope has declared that all other Christian denominations are defective, the ordinations of their clergy and the sacraments given are invalid. His comments are considered dogma by the Catholic Church going all the way back to the Reformation. To top that most evangelicals and pentecostals do not count Catholics as Christians. So you see you can't have your cake and eat it too.

People who say "this is a Christian nation" or "this is a white nation" are both trying to promote the political or societal supremacy of those groups (which, by the wildest of coincidences, are nearly always groups to which the speaker belongs). It's the same old tyranny of the majority/might-makes-right kind of statement.