My dad was almost the opposite, he was a life long democrat who had voted straight ticket since he cast his first vote for FDR. Reagan was the first Republican he ever voted for because Carter was just so that awful, I remember right after he voted, he walked in the door with this hangdog look on his face and said like he was confessing to a murder, "Well I did it, I voted for that damn Republican." The GOOD news is by 1984, he was driving around with Reagan bumper stickers on his truck and talking about Reagan like he was the second coming of Christ. Then after the Iran Contra deal, he got so angry at the Democrat party for the way they treated Reagan, he went and changed his voter registration and voted Republican until his death in 2000, just after Bush won the election (almost a blessing he didn't live long enough to see Obama get in).
WOw holy smoke what an awesome story! Everyone forgets how Reagan was hated pre-1980s. My brother who is older than me was going to college at the time and had his car trashed because he had Reagan bumper stickers on it. Even my Boy Scout troop believe it or not, the BS leaders were trashing Reagan. It all comes from Nixon and they were all like “Not another Repub”...They all believed the media back then. To this day you will still find people who grew up in that era believing that Nixon was responsible for Vietnam. I tell my kids today, always follow truth do not follow party. Do a little research and they did especially my one kid Michael who could not believe the BS the Democrats get away with. That’s the whole problem with voters today, they do not take the time to look up facts.