Republican Party Deconversions

I received an email from the Michigan Republican Party yesterday reminding me that "162 years ago today, the Republican Party was formed under the oaks in Jackson, Michigan."

In the past, I was an active Republican. I served as Treasurer of the Oakland County GOP, a Troy GOP precinct delegate, and even as Chairman of the Michigan Young Republicans.

But, with the passage of time, I can relate to a recent article Political Deconversions written by Rod Dreher.

Dreher describes his "deconversion" from the GOP:

So I have been politically homeless since at least 2008, and expect I will be for the rest of my life. So why do I still call myself a conservative? Because I am not a progressive, and I mostly reject liberalism (in the sense that both mainstream parties are liberal), though any reader of this blog knows that I have a lot of internal contradictions around this that I need to work out. Basically, I believe in Russell Kirk’s Ten Principles of Conservative Thought. I identify with a strain of rightist thought Philip Blond has called Red Toryism. I don’t see them instantiated in either party. It is fairly silly to call oneself a conservative but to feel no particular affinity for the more conservative of the two parties.

Read the whole article by Dreher.