when was the last time you heard of lifelong DEM switching to REP?

[unblock]

every once in a while, you hear of a lifelong republican saying enough is enough, and switching to become an independent or a democrat.

not nearly enough, but at least you do hear stories.

around 9/11, we all heard of lifelong dems supporting shrub (often with a rumsfeldian attitude -- you go to war with the president you have, not the president you wish you had), but since 9/11, nothing. he's steadily lost support, sometimes for good. but i've NEVER heard of him winning a single convert after the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

have you?

[evlbstrd]

1. Zell Miller ring a bell?

[unblock]

4. technically he's still not a republican

and i suspect his conversion happened on 9/11, if not earlier.

[evlbstrd]

19. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

And I didn't hear anything of his crossing over until the 2004 campaign.

[bunkerbuster1]

22. Zell Miller became a Gooper the minute he set foot in DC

The guy was shocked, shocked, to learn that most Dems in the US were more liberal than the Joe-Jah variety. yarite.

Anyhoo this was pre-9/11.

[Chipper Chat]

2. Ben Nighthorse Campbell

Richard Shelby.
Ronald Reagan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(all pre-9/Bushven)

[JeffR]

3. Joementum?

Not OFFICIALLY switched, but hey.

[LiberalEsto]

5. Joe Lieberman n/t

[BrainRants]

6. Joe Lieberman?

[Sammy Pepys]

7. Sen. Richard Shelby

Came into the Senate as a Dem I think. But this was way before 9/11.

[Chipper Chat]

8. Bet Shelby now wishes he'd never switched.

(And So To Bed)

[babylonsister]

9. Didn't Normie Coleman switch? nt

[Geoff R. Casavant]

10. So many Texas elected officials

used to be Democrats, but switched parties when the R's started being on the upswing.

Gov. Perry is one such person; so is Carolyn Strayhorn.

[Johonny]

11. I think the thing to remember is

they have taken over the Republican party. They have brought in many new congressmen and state official extremely loyal to Bush (or more to the point the big pay off they think is coming from Bush). A lot of previously powerful republicans are scared of the cult of Bush. I think the Republicans that wanted out like Christie Todd, Owens, Jeffers got out early. Others like McCain are hanging around thinking there's going to be a big pay off (there won't be). Which I guess is a long way of saying the Cult of Bush is placing into power the already converted, thus they have no need to convert anyone.

[WI_DEM]

12. Actually there was quite a period of time when we did hear of many

southern democrats switching parties. But you don't hear it much anymore. Now you hear of an ocassional republican who becomes an indepedent or maybe even a democrat.

[Cyrano]

16. Yep. It happened when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

He said at the time that "This will cost us the south." Nonetheless, he knew it was the right and moral thing to do. So much for the so-called morality of the holier-than-thou bible beaters who became Republicans rather than accepting black people as their equals.

[Poiuyt]

13. Didn't Dennis Miller used to be a Democrat?

Or was he always Republican and then 9/11 drove him over the cliff?

[unblock]

20. i thought he always identified himself as a libertarian

[Journeyman]

14. Former Texas Gov. John Connelly. . .

switched from Democrat to Republican in the late '60s.

[DaveinMD]

15. happened a lot

with southern realignment of conservative Dems to the Republican party. Trent Lott was once a Democrat.

[LA lady]

17. Problem in LA

My son lives in Tennessee and his Rep switched from Dem to Rep a few weeks ago. People were pretty mad.
We have had a big problem here in LA with that. Alexander flipped about a year ago.

I don't know if your just talking about politicians but I have always driven registered Dems to vote. I can't do that anymore cause so many of the elderly people I went to pick up have Puke signs in their yard!

[TahitiNut]

18. I can tell you don't live in the South ... or the "Bible Belt".

Throughout the South and into Texas, Utah, and Idaho, right-wing "Democrats" have been joining their antisocial kin in the Republican Party for three decades, despite their 150-year rabid antipathy for the "party of Lincoln." Many Americans, being very mobile, who've moved elsewhere are following this migration.

On almost no other topic does the relative youth of a DUer expose itself than in the presumption that Democrat = "liberal" and Republican = "conservative" is some long-established distcintion between that parties. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is, in fact, a recent sedimentation, made even more evident with the ascendancy of Bush 41.

[unblock]

21. my point was that it doesn't happen AFTER 9/11

yes it's been happening since the 60s and right after 9/11.

but no more, it seems.