My maternal grandmother was a life-long Democrat.
She would always give me the party line: Republicans are for the rich; Democrats are for the common man.
In the fifteen to twenty years prior to her death, she really razzed me for ditching the Democrats. Her relatives would pull funny pranks on her like getting a picture of George Bush and having it faked autographed to his "biggest fan."
She was of, what I would call, the "old Democratic party." Back before they changed.
A few years before she passed away in 2012, after Obama had been president for a couple years, she called me and said she desperately needed to speak with me. While we didn't see eye to eye in politics, we held the same moral values.
She said that she felt the Democratic party had changed to the point that she no longer felt comfortable calling herself a Democrat. She said they no longer were for the common man, but seemed to be trying to tear America down.
She asked this question, "Without becoming a Republican, what else can I be?"
I knew this was something very serious, as for as long as I could remember, she said she would always be a Democrat.
So, we talked about her choices. We talked about becoming a Libertarian. She didn't like that so much because it sounded too much like becoming a Liberal. We talked about her becoming an Independent. She didn't really like that because there aren't too many Independent candidates in Oklahoma and many of the local elections are settled in the primaries.
In the end, she finally asked me about the Republican party. As I explained things the best I knew how, she exclaimed, "Well that's not what I thought they were at all!" She went on to say that they sounded more like she believed than she was led to believe.
She didn't make it to the next presidential election. As her health rapidly declined, I don't think she was ever able to register in a different party.
But I know that this life-long Democrat left the Democratic Party over values.
Let's face it; the Democratic Party today isn't the Democratic Party it was even 25 years ago. In recent DNC events, they tried to remove God from their platform and actually booed when the moderator fudged to get it back in.
In the 2016 election, they completely rigged the system against Bernie Sanders, then reportedly paid him off for his trouble.
In the past two years, they have doubled down against the traditional values in America, seemingly for the sole purpose of getting votes to remain in power.
They are willing to kill babies at the time of their birth.
They think the government should pay for sex-change operations.
They think the borders should be left wide open.
They have openly called for the confiscation of guns.
The list goes on.
Here's the deal. I'm not advocating anyone necessarily becoming a Republican, but please, for the love of God and country, walk away from the Democrats. Wake up and see what they are doing to our country.
No political party is perfect, for it is man's institution. And good grief, the Republicans have their own problems! To be honest, I wish we had something called the Patriot's Party that was the real deal alternative to the the big 2.
Most of the local elections where I live seldom have any third party candidates, and often, they only have Republican candidates, so, I'll stay put where I am for a while. I'd almost become a Libertarian, except for their views on abortion and marijuana.
But it says a lot to me, when a woman in her 90's, is seeking to find something different because in good conscience, she could not longer be a Democrat.
