Cenk Uygur a former Republican

[dtotire]

Political views
1980s–90s

Uygur was a registered Republican in his youth, a supporter of President Ronald Reagan, and a member of the Republican student group at the University of Pennsylvania,<7> and the conservative Federalist Society, describing himself as a "Northeast moderate Republican", and a former hawk, having supported the Gulf War and until 2009, the War in Afghanistan (though he has strongly opposed the Second Iraq War).<8> When covering the 2010 midterm elections on November 2, 2010, Uygur stated that he had previously worked for a time for Republican former New York Congressman Joe DioGuardi, who was defeated by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand that night in his bid for her Senate seat.<9>



http://uk.ask.com/wiki/Cenk_Uygur#Early_life.2C_education.2C_and_early_career

[lonestarnot]

1. And your point is?

[Overseas]

2. I'm glad he has seen the light.

[WillyT]

3. He Says That On His TYT Show All The Time, It's No Secret...

What I want to know, is how many posters on this board are former Republicans???

:evilgrin:

[Ohio Joe]

5. I would probably fall into that catagory

I was never registered but I did vote for raygun in my first election. After that, I started paying attention and voting D.

[SoCalDem]

11. Northeast moderate republicans are more liberal than many southern/mountain-state dems

[SharonAnn]

27. So are Midwest moderate Republicans, like me. Socially liberal!

[REP]

29. Like that horrible, horrible Lincoln Chaffee??

:sarcasm: I think he's a good guy and know he's an I now :-)

[AmandaRuth]

17. what I want to know is

how many posters (serial un reccers) are still republicans.

[SlicerDicer-]

26. Guilty :(

[MNBrewer]

4. Back when I was an in-the-closet young person

I was a Republican, too. Then I came out and dumped that along with pretending to be straight.

So what's your point?

Ariana Huffington used to be a Republican too.

[CatholicEdHead]

24. Same here, a MN - Arne Carlson style Republican

Of course now the current head of the MN GOP has exiled the former MN Governor for not supporting the last party favorite for Governor, Tom Emmer and campaigning for the MN Independence Party candiate who basically was a moderate MN Republican of yesteryear.

I felt I have stayed mostly in place but I end up farther and farther to the left as everything around is moving rapidly to the radical right. There is no way I want to have anything to do with today's Republican Party (I left for good around 2001 (Patriot Act, Iraq War)). It is only the DFL for me now.

[seabeyond]

6. he talks about it often. but he also is not liberal shy either. i wait to hear the conservative

and he would say, as a previous conservative, i am into... fiscal responsibility, but he always postions himself as liberal and flaming liberal in some issues.

he is a sexist pig (in ways and not others), though... lol, but i listen to him often

[inna]

10. what makes him "a sexist pig"? very curious

[seabeyond]

14. have you and i discussed this before?

one time he stated if he had a son and daughter, daughter have sex at 18, son at 16. even though female more mature than male, the number should reverse if we are deciding what age specific genders should have sex

he had a picture of a male underwear model on ONCE and had picture up about ten seconds before, take it off, ok, we got it, take picture down, dont need to see it anymore. yet, he continually puts naked women up and goes on and on about hitting it and every other crude and crass way of objectifying the women

but then, all this is cool because he is a man. and this is how men are made. they are suppose to be this, it is genetic

i could go on...

i say this, in ways, because he will also defend women rights in all forms that i see.

he has bought into the male evolutionary behavior biology of little evolution in the male gender.

[inna]

19. nope, i don't think we've ever discussed anything. thanks for indulging me though!

:hi:

[JTFrog]

30. I knew it when I saw the segment he did on plus size models.

The man is definitely a p-i-g pig.

[seabeyond]

31. i often

smirk... listening to him talking about women, and then looking at him. i never understood people that are by far not a ten, comfortable with dissing anothers appearance.

[spanone]

7. 'former' is the key word

[Cant trust em]

8. Lots of people are former republicans.

I'm not sure how this is relevant.

[mmonk]

9. And your point is? Survey says..........

[Capitalocracy]

12. "Back when I was a Republican"...

Anyone who watches the show knows that phrase.

[KharmaTrain]

13. So Was Markos...

They prove the saying "I didn't leave the party, the party left me". Once upon a time there were liberal republicans...John Lindsey and Lowell Wiecker are good examples. They got chased when Raygun came in...the the moderates were purged with the Gingrich "revolution" (emphasis on the "revolting").

Today's GOTB is far removed from the party of Edward Brooke, Jacob Javitz and Chuck Percy...and as has been said around here, even Nixon looks liberal compared to the current crop of miscreants.

Just like a reformed smoker, some of the biggest zealots can be those that came from the other side...

[Shagbark Hickory]

22. No freakin way. nt

I'm speechless.

[blogslut]

28. As well as John Aravosis and David Brock from Media Matters

Ed Schultz once considered running for congress as a Republican.

I tend to judge people not by what they call themselves but rather, by how they act. It's one thing to be a politician who opportunistically switches parties like Arlen Spector or former Democrat-turned-Republican and current Tea Party pin-up boy, governor Rick Perry. It's a whole other to be a person who experiences to a sincere change in philosophy and then practices that philosophy with a passion.

[Prof Lester]

15. Well the "Neo-cons" were supposedly former Dems

Supposedly disappointed by Democratic policies. Actually before that they were Trotskyite communists drooling over the thought of a worldwide revolution (with them in charge, of course!) What's the point of your posting? You don't like Cenk? I don't care. I like some of the things he says. There was only one perfect man in human history.. and they nailed Him up. So don't go looking for saints. There aren't any. As someone once said, I'd take help from the devil himself if he was on point.. knowing full well he would betray at the first opportunity. But I ain't voting for Cenk. I'm just listening to him once in a while. So what?:shrug:

[AtomicKitten]

16. Hey, a guy who names his son Prometheus Maximus Uygur is okay by me.

Cenk walked away from the dark side and rocks the left side of the political spectrum now. That kind of perspective is valuable.

[Auntie Bush]

18. The majority of older adults today were once Republican.

How else did Raygun win almost every state in the union? An awful lot of people voted for him but they don't like to admit it. Myself included. I can't imagine ever voting ReThug again. I'm sure Cenk or Marcos or millions of others can't either.

[Adsos Letter]

20. I walked districts for the Nixon campaign as a highschooler in 1972

and later that year volunteered for the Army. Raised in a conservative family, it took me awhile to get my own political bearings.

[Shagbark Hickory]

21. Wow! Never would have guessed.

But I suppose people are entitled to change their minds.

Seems like these tv personalities change their minds when new job offers come along. hmmm.

[walldude]

23. Oh.. well, take him out back and shoot him.

:shrug:

[Bucky]

25. Interesting how many posters take a statement of fact as a provocation

I think it's interesting. It even inspires a little bit of hope in me. But 3 or 4 posts in this thread seem to think the OP means something dark by this (perhaps some variation of "don't trust him") instead of "here's an interesting fact." One thing that sucks about the culture of the DU board is the reflexive assumption that people you don't even know have secret agendas meant to undermine our integrity.

Silly.

[Armstead]

33. It's often how things are presented

A post that simply says he is a republican with some biographical back up, but without any personal perspective as to why the person thinks this is worth posting about, does make it seem provocative.

If it had said something like: This is interesting. I guess people can change....or something else would put it into context.

However since there is often a tendency by some to toss any figure who is ever critical of Obama or the Democratic Party under the bus, there is often a reflexive reaction that a post like this is another case of bus tossing.

Maybe that was not the intent, but that's what happens.

[mod mom]

32. So? So was Ed Schultz who is now one of progressive's strongest supporters.

[Ramulux]

34. Cenk has been one of the strongest progressive voices in the world

for over 12 years. TYT was the first original show created for Air America and is the largest online political talk show in the world. The guy gave up a comfy job as a lawyer to start from nothing on local public access channels.

Cenk has done more to spread progressive values in this country than almost anyone and he refers to his time as a republican constantly as a way of explaining how insane republicans have become over the past 2 decades. You can dislike Cenk and TYT all you want, but no one can make the case that he is not 100% dedicated to the cause and is willing to do anything in his power to spread the truth to as many people as possible.