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I quit politics because I hated it.

I left the Democratic Party basically on issues of national security during the end of the Vietnam War.

I started out as a Democrat.

I sometimes think that I didn't leave the Republican Party, as much as it left me.

I was a Democrat for a period of time early on. And then I was also an independent. And then I became a Republican.

I started out being a really, really liberal Democrat.

For the first half of my adult life, I was a Democrat.

It wasn't until after I was reelected in 1982 that I thought of myself as a long-term member of Congress.

Half a century ago, Ronald Reagan, the man whose relentless optimism inspired me to enter politics, famously said that he didn't leave the Democratic Party; the party left him. I can certainly relate. I didn't leave the Republican Party; it left me.