5 Reasons Why I Left the Republican Party

It has been nearly twenty years since I quit the GOP. These are the the issues I wrestled with and what ultimately made me walk away forever.

Oct 25, 2024

Mom called me a “Rush Baby” though I hated that phrase because in 1988, the year Rush Limbaugh went in to syndication and his daily show first oozed out of the speakers of Mom’s car like pus from a gangrenous wound, I was 11 and decidedly not a baby. I also was not fond of Limbaugh, even as a 6th grader.

Mom sold display advertising for The Creston Shopper, a now-defunct weekly coupon and advertising tab that was available for free in the entryway of the grocery store, in the bright red rack next to electric horsey she never let me ride when I was small and the gum ball machine that dispensed pop metal rings that broke before you got to the car.

The job meant she spent hours a day in her Chevy Celebrity, driving all over southwest Iowa, speaking to business owners in Corning and Mount Air and Winterset and Greenfield and many little hamlets in between. It also meant that she spent hours marinating in the absurd and vile “talent on loan from God” of a man who would later call a woman a slut for wanting her employer-provided insurance to cover her birth control.

Don’t get me wrong. Limbaugh didn’t convert mom. Before she ever turned on the radio, she was already a die-hard supporter of Reagan. She and dad took me with them to see Reagan speak on the courthouse steps in Winterset during his 1984 reelection campaign. I was young but all I recognized was how happy Ronald Reagan seemed to make my parents. Considering how bad everything else was in our lives at the time, if something made them happy, it had to be good, right?

Dad never listened to Limbaugh, for the record. Hours upon end in the tractor or the farm truck and it was only KSIB, the local radio station for classic country music and 1040 WHO on Saturdays for the Hawkeye games.

Limbaugh’s words made my mom see the world through much harsher lenses. Instead of Democrats being neighbors who had a different preference, like Ford vs. Chevy, she began saying phrases like “looney left” and “feminazi.” I was grossed out by that kind of talk, even as a teen but I also thought I didn’t know any Democrats. To me, Democrats were people who lived in big cities and belonged to scary cults called unions and they hated me and my family and wanted to raise our taxes. Come to find out, there were actually Democrats in my family but they didn’t speak about their politics to me. The only political voices I heard were Limbaugh’s and Mom’s.

In 1996, I was finally old enough to vote on my own and Mom and all the other adults in my life had done such a great job of creating a boogey-man out of Clinton, I voted for Dole.

I might have been the only student at Iowa State to vote for Dole. Even when my sorority house hosted Elizabeth Dole (who was a Tri-Delta alum), our house president implored us to all be kind to her even though “no one is this house is probably going to vote for her husband.” It was the first time in my life (at age 20) that I considered that Democrats might actually be out walking around in the world, and even in my own community. Heck, some of my friends might even be Democrats!

In 2000, voting took a back seat as I graduated from college, got married, moved out of state and started a career. I am not sure if I voted that year but if I did I am sure it was for Bush. But 2004 was a different story. In the haze and religious fervor that came out of the trauma of 9/11, mixed up with the fear and isolation of being a first time parent and stay-at-home mom, I found myself in an extremist Baptist church and deep into Republicanism. Both fit me like a noose around my neck but I didn’t realize it at the time.

People often ask me what led me to leave the Republican party when, by the time I was 30 I was so fully bought in. I don’t often speak much about this time in my life because it is such a challenging question to answer. Because there wasn’t really just one thing. Sometimes in life we have single moments or events or decisions that define who we are but in this case, my leaving was much more like rocks falling from a dam, little by little, until the whole belief system came crashing down.

I have tried to pare the story of my ultimate departure down to the five biggest things that contributed to leaving because this post is already too long. But I am sharing my experience for two reasons. First, because if you are a Republican yourself, perhaps you are on the fence this year and maybe my story can help you sort out some of what you are struggling with. Second, because if you are someone who loves a Trump-supporting Republican, perhaps these are things here that you can hope to engage with them on, to help them see a different point of view… although considering how MAGA has taken over the party of Reagan, your mileage may vary. Good luck.

P.S. As with many Republicans, my politics were intimately intertwined with my faith. Leaving behind my political party meant reckoning with the role church had played in reinforcing many of the worst of what the party had become. Maybe some day I will write about that when I am ready.

1.My son’s disability diagnosis. Any parent of a child with a disability can tell you that receiving a diagnosis brings both grief and relief. It can be heartbreaking to accept that your child will face the social, emotional, physical and financial challenges of a disability and at the same time, receiving answers to your questions and an action plan to move forward can bring such a sense of comfort. When our son was diagnosed, I got to see up close and personal the how two different world views addressed the issue of disability and what I saw changed me forever.

Our “godless” public school created supports for our son. They helped him grow and learn. They created space and inclusion and acceptance for him. Their approach was centered on what was best for him. They listened patiently. They encouraged him and saw his value as a member of our community. There were of course bumps along the way in dealing with the school from time to time but my concerns were met with respect and compassion and a desire to help.

The same was not true of the “conservative” and “Christian” people we knew. They shamed us for bad parenting. They told us we needed to douse him in essential oils. They ostracized and isolated him at church. They told us how kids like him grow up to be school shooters. They asked if we’d done genetic testing to see if he had a chromosomal abnormality passed on from my genetics (only mine). They told us to pull him from public school and homeschool. They told us “all he really needs is a good whoopin.” They called him spoiled, demon-filled, in need of healing (aka sick).

But those words did not match what I knew about my son. They also did not match our experience at school. I was heartsick at the way they saw him and with every new insult, I became more disillusioned at the “Republicans” in my life. It also helped me to get a glimpse for the first time in my life, the discrimination and misunderstanding that people with disabilities face. It made me wonder if “discrimination” might be a bigger problem than what Limbaugh let on.

Thanks for reading Roots & Revolution by Amber Gustafson! This post is public so feel free to share it.

2.Health care. My husband and I have been small business owners since the early days of our marriage. In the days before the Affordable Care Act, that meant our only option was to purchase a high deductible catastrophic health care plan. From the time I left my job at the University of Missouri when my first son was born in 2003 until the ACA was passed, we carried this kind of insurance. The deductible was typically $12,000 to $17,000 a year. That meant until we met our deductible, our insurance wouldn’t pay a dime toward mammograms, pap smears, immunizations, well-child visits, office visits of any kind. It also excluded all our pre-exisiting conditions (remember those?) and there was a whole laundry list of things it just… didn’t cover including mental health care.

But the thing I found most insulting was insurance companies’ “maternity coverage.” Maternity care was not covered under a regular high deductible policy. Even if we’d met our deductible, no coverage. Unless we wanted to purchase a “maternity rider” — a special insurance policy that cost an arm and a leg but that you had to carry for three years with no claims before you could receive full benefits. Most people are floored when I tell them about our experience with pre-ACA private insurance because most folks have either always had great insurance through an employer or don’t remember the days before Obamacare.

Between 2003 and 2009 I gave birth three times. On our crappy insurance we paid thousands out of our pocket for prenatal visits, labor and delivery, immunizations and doctor visits for every sniffle, tummy ache and fever. It was a financial albatross for a young family like ours.

I wanted a solution to our insurance problems and watched to see if either party would ever do anything about it. I told myself, if a Democrat ever came along and offered a plan for some kind of public health insurance, I’d vote for them.

But despite the Republican talking point that had them supporting entrepreneurship and encouraging women to be stay-at-home moms, they never brought forth any kind of a plan. As recently as last month, the Republican nominee claimed that he has “concepts of a plan.” I left the GOP in 2008 and I have yet to see anything from them resembling a plan. Meanwhile, our ACA plans have provided good, solid and reliable coverage that actually pays for the things we need for over a decade.

3.Sarah Palin. When John McCain announced he’d chosen a woman as a running mate, I was thrilled. I was excited for the possibilities that having a woman and a mother in that position meant for all women. Then she opened her mouth. And I realized that she’d been chosen as a political stunt. She couldn’t name a newspaper she read regularly. She lacked substance or seriousness. She was there to mug for the camera, create sound bytes and be the comic relief. I was disgusted and I felt that she set women’s achievement back 50 years.

I had an inkling that the party might be headed toward absurdity because to me the nomination of Palin signaled desperation in the ranks. The prospect of a Black man becoming president and America’s balance of power shifting seemed to break something within the party. That break felt sinister. And when Palin sat down to eat pizza with a knife and fork (horror of horrors) with a mob-connected small-time real estate developer from New York in 2011, I could never have predicted where we are now but the feeling in my gut was that the party was starting to shift toward something cynical and bleak. I wanted no part of it.

4.Sandy Hook. Full disclosure: By the time the Sandy Hook school shooting happened, I had already left the Republican party. I’d changed my voter registration and in my mind no longer identified as a member of the GOP. In December of 2012, I had voted for Obama just the month before the shooting took place. I had also voted for a few Republicans on the same ballot. But as I watched the news coverage of the tragedy unfold in the hours before I was to pick up my own children from a school building that looked so much like Sandy Hook, the dam broke wide open. In the hours and days and weeks after, I watched to see who was working to try to prevent another Sandy Hook and who was placing unrestricted gun access above the lives of school children. Only three Republican senators voted for Manchin-Toomey, a bill that would have required background checks on all gun sales, a policy so basic and so crucial, it felt like a gimme. Nearly 100 percent of Republican senators had voted against protecting kids. For me, there was no going back.

5.My kids. The 2008 election was the only election where I have truly been an undecided voter. I struggled as I saw the party as one I belonged to but which did not contain my values or my hopes for my country. My religious beliefs kept me tethered to one side of the ticket even when everything inside my soul told me to jump. And I wrestled with all of these things mostly alone because I knew voicing my questions and reservations could lead to rejection from my family and my church, maybe even my spouse.

By the time I went to the polls, I was throughly disgusted by Palin but only one thing gave me some hope for the Republican party: John McCain. He seemed decent. He worked with the other side. He was not an ideolouge or a radical. He was kind, soft-spoken and he’d served our country. I wasn’t ready to vote for a Democrat in 2008. But I could support McCain. I hoped he might be able to steer the party away from the darker impulses I saw looming on the horizon.

With shaky hands, I filled in the bubble next to his name. But I did not feel a sense of relief. Even after my vote was cast, I wanted to take it back. When I climbed in the car with my husband after we voted, I said, “I think I have made a mistake. But if Obama survives his first term, I am for sure going to vote for him next time.”

When we returned home, our kids were waiting for us. My mom had come over to babysit while we had gone to the polls. Walking in, they were sitting at the kitchen island. Our son who was five, looked up at us and said with all the hope and optimism of a child, “Did you vote for the first Black president?”

And in that moment, I realized that it wasn’t just conservative relatives or extremist fellow church members who were watching me and thinking about how I vote. My kids were too. I had read them books about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks. At church they’d learned about “love one another” and the Good Samaritan. They’d never been exposed to talk radio hate. And they had friends of many different colors and backgrounds. In that moment, my reference group changed. I no longer wished to uphold the dismal, out-of-touch, and hateful world I saw in the Republican party. I wanted to be a part of creating a better world for my kids. I was tired of the tearing down. I longed to build hope. More than anything, I wanted my words and the things I was teaching my kids to match with my actions. Of course I could have stayed a Republican and taught my kids anything I wanted. After all, Republican is just a name on a voter roll. It doesn’t have to define how you vote, how you live, what you believe or what you teach your kids. But for me, leaving the party behind created space and permission for me to ask the questions I’d been struggling with. It allowed me to read, to listen to podcasts and watch television programs that challenged my world-view. It freed me from chasing the approval of those whose values no longer matched mine.

Hours later, I changed my voter registration to Independent.

So maybe you are reading this and thinking, well what about the biggest elephants in the room for Republicans: abortion and LGBTQ issues?

I didn’t include those for a reason. (Again, this post is already WAY too long) But also because I believe those issues deserve their own space. They are issues that are exceedingly personal to me. They are also issues with which I always was at odds with the Republican party and I still wrestle with the harm that I contributed to through my votes.

I foolishly believed that the Democrats would always be able to stop the worst of the legislation. I thought I could vote Republican and enough other people would vote for Democrats and we would always have a balanced government that never got too far out of control. I believed that public sentiment would always shift toward greater acceptance and that expansion of rights was inevitable, regardless of how I voted.

It’s a total shit way of looking at the world. And I suspect a whole lot of people feel the same why. It’s why we are in the mess we are in. It’s why national polls consistently show Americans support progressive policies by a wide margin even when they don’t vote for the politicians who espouse them.

I have a lot to say about this so I will save it for a future post.

I feel very vulnerable writing about these things. I suspect some former friends and members of my family might be upset to read some of these things, if they read my Substack. And I think I am pretty well resistant to that kind of shame.

What I fear is those who might see my honesty as an opportunity to condemn me for not getting it right from the start — or ever voting for a Republican or for believing what I was taught without question. To those folks, I will only say, I hope you have an opportunity in your life to throughly question what YOU believe. Blind, unquestioning devotion is dangerous, regardless of the party listed on your voter registration. Anyone can fall into a trap of creating an identity out of their political party or political beliefs. In fact, most of us do. That’s why trying to change a person’s political stance is so difficult. Those beliefs are pernicious. It’s like trying to convince a horse he’s car. Unless the horse is motivated to change his beliefs, you’re never gonna get there.

It’s ok to be wrong. It’s ok to question and its ok to admit, even to yourself that you had an error in your thinking or that you’ve changed your mind. You don’t have to have all the answers today. You don’t have to convert overnight. And you don’t have to change who you are. Open your heart and see where the truth takes you.

Amber Gustafson is a mom of three from Ankeny, Iowa. She grew up on a farm in the southwest corner of the state and has a B.A. from Iowa State University and a MAC from Drake University. She is a member of Kappa Tau Alpha Journalism Honor Society, Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP). For more than a decade she has been a public advocate for the lives, health and safety of Iowans, running for Iowa Senate in 2018. You can read more of her work at Bleeding Heartland and The Des Moines Register and read more about her in The Washington Post. For interview and speaking requests, please email ambergus.iowa(at)gmail.com.