Literally the only viable defense (in my own opinion, of course) that the Feds can mount for the nomination of fhtagn is "well she may be a raging left-winger, but she's willing to play something different on TV (maybe)!".
Which may work - who am I to say these days? - but I arguably find the most distressing part of this to be the fact that people like Yankee and PiT have completely abdicated their once-conservative principles and are just willing to chase whatever ideology or lack thereof in the pursuit of victory. I was never willing to cross the ideological hemispheres to elect a President who blatantly didn't agree with me on most core issues, but maybe I'm just old fashioned (and "irrelevant"!).
If anything PiT has gotten more Conservative not less. 
I remember when he was a raging libertarian with yellow avatar.
Which I think is a big part of why I see nothing all that incredible about fhtagn's trajectory. Other than that I started on the right in economics and she started on the left, it's very similar to my own; we have proceeded by discarding previously inviolable dogmas and gradually opening up to conservative ideas on what constitutes good government. Neither one of us is exactly described by the word "conservative", but the line of influence is there (much more strongly in my case as it happens).
PiT, if you or anybody else had went from flaming leftist to Confederate apologizer in a matter of weeks after switching parties - all the while continuing to post very left-wing commentary on the forum - I'd be asking the same questions (unless you were like 14 years old or something).
Again, I - really more than anybody else! - understand the natural progression of people changing ideology. How many of your old voters found their way to Labor over the years? A lot! FFS, Hagrid just registered as Labor the other day!
I probably saw more defections from one hemisphere to the other that benefited me at the time than anybody else in the game ever. But they didn't abruptly switch from Fed to Lab (though plenty back in the day did switch from Lab to Fed out of spite - but at least they were honest about it) and then pretend to be conservative, and even if there was one or two who did, they didn't get the Labor Party's endorsement in the next election.
Tell me, have you ever considered why you have seen so many defections to your camp? It should be easy for you to understand that since you know the natural progression of people changing ideology so well. Puzzle me that and I can tell you why this instance flows the other way. (BTW, if your answer is going to be something hackish like "the left is the path of truth and justice!", then spare me it.)
The forum is left leaning and young. That means these teenagers, who dont have a 100% developed ideology, are influenced by the other posters who are most of them really left leaning, so this has a big impact on their political views, so that explains their leftwing shift.
