What experiences shifted Reagan toward conservatism?

Answer 1

Reagan was a very good President maybe the best President of the 20th Century. Anyways Reagan became a conservative in the 60s because he saw the Cultural Marxist movements of the 60s and he saw them as evils against a christian patriotic society. He wanted to reverse this a little bit. Watch the video Who's Killing Us on YouTube to get more information about what cultural marxism is and how is present in our society today. Have a nice day :)

Answer 2

It was a gradual process over a long period. Long story short and super simplified-

When the Republican party started in the 1850s, both the GOP and the Democrats were "pro-business" but pro different kinds of "business"- the Democrats were more aligned with farmers and plantation owners, and the Republicans were more aligned with the urban people, especially factory owners. After the Civil War, this paradigm largely stayed the same, but the Republicans also moved a little more leftist on certain issues- they became the "progressive" party. Bear in mind that politics worked a little differently back then- Communism and Socialism formed and grew during the mid-to-late 1800s, and that's when labor and related social issues started to be seen as important political issues. Socialism in particular suddenly became very popular in the Mid West, especially Iowa and Kansas.

Eventually Teddy Roosevelt came to be a leader in the party around the turn of the century, and he was an interesting figure as he was very progressive on many issues (eg "trust busting", labor laws, National Parks, and even sought to set up universal health care, etc) but also staunchly imperialist and pro-war, which to modern progressives, makes no sense. He split with the mainstream Republicans, led by William Howard Taft, and formed his own "Progressive Party" (often nickanmed "Bull Moose Party"), which failed to survive his exit from politics. Taft's faction, now in control of the Republican party, stayed mostly pro-business centrist. Roosevelt was immensely popular and actually beat Taft in the 1912 election, although Woodrow Wilson (a Democrat) was able to win overall due to the split in the Republican party. Wilson had been influenced by the progressive movement too, and was the first Democrat to really start pushing some progressive policies.

The next big shift was Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s-40s. Roosevelt was ideologically somewhat similar to his distant cousin Teddy, and to combat the Great Depression, instituted a lot of fairly progressive-inspired social programs collectively called the New Deal. However, he was a Democrat- he had considered going into the Republican party, and came to believe that he couldn't get anywhere with them (it mainly had to do with politics in New York state at the time). He had to make deals with various centrist and liberal subfactions of the Democratic party, which until that point was pretty much the hardcore super-conservative party based mainly in the South (this trend was known as the "Solid South"). The "New Deal Coalition" came to dominate the Democratic Party- and the United States government in general- until the late 1960s, and the leftover super-conservatives became known as Dixiecrats (after "Dixie", a nickname for the South, which was where most of these conservatives were from). The Dixiecrats were even briefly their own political party, but it was small and fairly weak, so it wasn't able to survive long.

With the Democratic party still under control of the New Deal Coalition, most of the right-wingers and Dixiecrats (but not all- notably Robert Byrd stayed a Democrat right up until his death a few years ago) gradually migrated over to the Republican party, which had until that point remained the largely centrist, pro-business party- they found that they agreed more with the Republican than the new Democratic Party. By the late 1960s, the Republican Party had emerged as the primary conservative party and the Democratic "Solid South" ended; Lyndon Johnson cemented the Democratic Party as the primary center-left party, although the New Deal Coalition finally collapsed around 1968, and the Democratic Party became more factionalized.

So it wasn't just an overnight thing, it was a long process that took about a century. And politics are still shifting even to this day, so this dichotomy could totally change!

Answer 3

In 1952 he joined "Democrats for Eisenhower" and he continued to support Ike in 1956, In 1960

he again supported the republican candidate , Nixon. In 1962, he formally joined the Republican party and was a staunch republican thereafter.

Answer 4

He saw the Communist taking over the Democratic party and wanted no part of the Democratic party after that.