Reagan eventually switched to the 'right' party, too..

Mom was a serious Democrat and Dad was a no-nothing Republican. But I’d registered along side my dad, so X’ed the R box... Carter was my first Presidential vote - making me ‘A Carter Republican’

@Varn Carter was the first president I ever voted for and the only democrat and I regretted it.

@Trajan61 Carter was a moderate, injured by ‘ted’ Kennedy in the primary. How’d you justify voting for a party of religious zealots lead by Reagan..?

@Varn I consider the religous zealots to be the lessor evil to the big government, higher taxes, and gun control democrats.

@Trajan61 ..then you got fooled...

@Varn No I didn’t. There is virtually no support for the democrats among cattlemens and farm groups as the democrats favor large estate taxes and property taxes as well other taxes. They also favor burdensome government regulations.

@Trajan61 So, a cattleman first, and atheist/ agnostic second?

@Trajan61 Let's address the estate tax BS issue once again.

The individual exemption, before the Trump tax cut for the rich, was $5.5 million for individuals, $11 million for couples. Farm real estate averaged just over $3000 an acre last year according to the Farm Journal [agweb.com]. If you can do math, that means (just as a rough example) you can have a farm of almost 2000 acres before paying a dime of estate tax as an individual. The average farm size, according to the 2012 census, is 434 acres. If you have a 2000 acre farm, you're not a small farmer. If you're paying estate tax, even with the cost of machinery and buildings, you're not a small farmer. A small farm is not worth $5.5 million dollars. Even the Farm Bureau couldn't find a single family farm that was lost because the family had to come up with money for the estate tax.

Here's some information from a few years ago, from Americans for Tax Fairness: these figures refer to 2013.

"The estate tax raised $8.5 billion in 2012 — less than 1% of the $1.2 trillion inherited that year.

Only 1 out of every 700 deaths results in paying the federal estate tax today. The vast majority of estates — 99.9% — do not pay federal estate taxes.

The estate tax will raise $225 billion over the next 10 years. This is more than the $164 billion 10-year shortfall in the highway and mass transit trust funds.

The Walton family — which owns half of Walmart — has exploited a loophole in the estate tax to avoid paying $3 billion in estate taxes. This could increase by tens of billions in the future.

Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson has exploited a loophole that allowed him to pass $8 billion to family members and avoid $2.8 billion in estate taxes."

One of the biggest scams the Republican party ever pulled was tricking average working people into believing they're among the top 0.1% richest in the nation and therefore have to be afraid of the big bad estate tax. It's only the super-wealthy that pay this tax, and that's who it is explicitly intended for. That's the only people Democrats want to have this tax apply to.

Will you Republicans please FFS drop the estate tax crap, or else just admit you stand for rich people not paying taxes and you don't give a shit about anyone else.

@Varn It’s my livihood Varn. I don’t like the religous influence in the Republican Party but I see it as the lessor evil.

@Paul4747 Here in Oklahoma where I live land averages no where near 3,000 dollars per acre as most of it is highly erodible grass land and unsuitable for farming. As small as the profit margin is in farming and ranching you’d be hard pressed to make a good living on 2000 acres. If what you say is true how come rural incomes are less than urban incomes? My sister and I are damn sure not super wealthy and we paid the government over 600,000 in estate taxes so you are full of crap!!

“Leadership Eighty”

Reagan was a registered Democrat until the party backed the civil rights bill.

@Marcel3405 No he turned republican when the Democratic Party chose Barack Obama over his close friend back in 08.

Kinda feeling like dementia is becoming contagious ?

@JimG Yeah him and at least 1/3 of the rest of the country so??

I suspect Trump is actually in the party of "Which bunch of you might possibly be fool enough to nominate me?" Turns out...

@Paul4747 Trump’s in his own party but everyone is blinded by the us against them notion to fucking see it.
Which is why i laugh at both republicans and democrats when it comes to him.

But he has followed in the patterns of Nixon and Reagan mostly Reagan though with his foreign economic policies. But he’s his party nonetheless

@48thRonin It speaks to character.

@JimG You do realize that we’re talking about party politicians right?
Just asking because character tends to no longer exist in most cases the moment they win

@48thRonin unfortunately, that is most often true.

@JimG Raygun also Lied to Sen.Joe McCarthy about fellow actors/actresses that He claimed were "Red"..Their careers were destroyed by being "Black listed", Paul Robeson was just one.. He was head of the Actors Guild at the time..a true POS..

@Charlene But yet he saved Nancy from the fire??

[chicagotribune.com]

@48thRonin he probably set it..just think "Bonzo goes to Bitsberg"

@Charlene Man, I knew he was scum, but I didn't know about his connection to the red scare.