Card Carrying Member

I don't know why many are surprised when I reveal my 46 year old married with no childern career woman self to be conservative. I grew up in Virginia in a conservative family with traditional values under the shadow of the Catholic religion. In college, when I was old enough to vote for Reagan for his second term, I was very excited to do so. In my early 2o's when I was asked to declare my affiliation with the Republican party, I reported to my polling place and so declared. I voted for Bush; four times.

I loved the Reagan years even though I left college to enter a job market with few jobs and at low pay. My family value was that you got education so that you could work and support yourself. According to my father it was a simple choice: college or the gutter. Why would one choose the gutter? So I went to college. Also, Dad was paying. The math, so they say, was easy. Anywho, even with my low paying job(s), I look back fondly on the Reagan years. I was always employed (under employed?), my bills could be paid, my overhead was low (no AC on while away at work).

After Reagan's two terms, I voted for Bush, and then after that I voted for Bush again. My Mom called me prior to the election and told me to vote for Perot. She was told by the Perot campaign to reach out to your family and friends and ask them to vote for Perot. I told her that Perot was a cuck and that I would not be voting for him. I blame my own mother and others like her for the Clinton years. But I weathered the Clinton years quite well. In retrospect, most likely because of the false prosperity and the failed foreign policy, I bettered my salary due to increased skills and job-hopping, and I had a neat little, meager stock portfolio that kept increasing in value like a slot machine on constant payoff. As a perk, I finally met a man that actually wanted to spend a lot of time with me and whom I eventually married; yada yada. Then eight years were up.

To this day I will tell anyone who asks or doesn't ask that if Clinton could have run for a third term, he would have won again. So began the George W. Bush years. I will state right here that I lived those years well , and I look back on those years fondly already. I believe that history will show that he was a good, if not great, president.

So last year I joined the Albemarle-Charlottesville Republican Woman's League; I know now that it was a calling. The Virginia Republican Creed card that they gave me explains my feelings quite clearly. I will paraphrase them here. I believe in free enterprise to supply human needs and economic justice. I believe that individuals are entitled to equal opportunities and justice and that they should assume their responsibilities as citizens in a free society. I believe that fiscal responsibility and budgetary restaints should be exercised at all levels of government. I believe that the federal government must observe constituitonal limitations. I believe that peace and a strong national defense go hand in hand. Lastly, there is faith in God as being essential to the moral fibre of the Nation. That is the hardest one. I will only say this, a god can mean many things to many people, but moral fibre is pretty much universally understood.

So this is why I proudly carry the card.