{"id":3,"date":"2006-03-07T09:32:06","date_gmt":"2006-03-07T14:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=3"},"modified":"2017-03-17T08:53:03","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T13:53:03","slug":"my-declaration-of-lincoln-democratic-independence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=3","title":{"rendered":"My Declaration of Lincoln-Democratic Independence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">I&#8217;ve been a Republican for 35 years. I stayed faithful despite moving to one of the most aggressively Democratic regions in the nation. I stayed faithful through the Watergate fiasco and even ran as a Republican candidate in its aftermath. I remained faithful as the Reagan revolution marginalized my kind of Republican, the socially libertarian. I remained a Republican (although I found myself voting for more independent and Democratic candidates) as Pat Robertson sent his stealth delegates into party caucuses and the &#8220;Moral Majority&#8221; took control.<\/font><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">In recent years I&#8217;ve ruefully stayed a Republican because there was no practical, independent party alternative.\u00c2\u00a0 I kept my temper by writing pointed criticism of Republican foibles and much worse <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snowbizz.com\/Diogenes\/Diogenes.htm\">in columns<\/a> in a local tabloid.<\/font><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">This year I turned double nickels. I&#8217;m 55 years old. For years friends have urged me to become a Democrat. Sometime in the last month or two it finally dawned on me that my points-of-view, even ones most Democrats would disagree with, would be far more generously received in the Democratic Party. I&#8217;d like to think, that being the majority of American citizens, we moderates still have some relevance. If the Republicans won&#8217;t have us, <em>Nay<\/em>, if they actively try to discourage and remove us from their ranks&#8230;well, there is only one serious alternative for us other than going off to sulk in a corner.\u00a0 <em>That alternative is the Democratic Party! <\/em>\u00a0It has a rich tradition, wonderful heroes, and for those of us who do not regard the word &#8220;liberal&#8221; as an imprecation, an important legacy to build America&#8217;s future on.<\/p>\n<p>Today I am a Democrat. I can not erase the last thirty-five years of my life so I bequeath my memories, fond and otherwise, to the Republican Party. Perhaps the GOP can find some use for them. I will not be going into the Democratic Party alone, however. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snowbizz.com\/SnowSculpting%20Page\/MySnow\/mysnow05-06.htm\">I&#8217;m taking Abraham Lincoln with me<\/a>. I am a Lincoln-Democrat.<\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\"><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\"><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\"><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\" \/><\/font><\/font><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\" \/><\/font><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\"><font face=\"Times New Roman\" size=\"3\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been a Republican for 35 years. I stayed faithful despite moving to one of the most aggressively Democratic regions in the nation. I&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21172,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions\/21172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}