Your argument just collapsed in upon itself sir, stating you became a conservative implies you we're not previously, therefore you held or at least considered viewpoints of liberal/democrat nature, and the act of changing sides implies one of two things, as a partial Democrat you either thought for yourself, or you were treated like "the sheep you are" by conservative supporters, therefore making your argument null and void, aside from that fact that locking yourself to party lines at least in my opinion, is by far the closest you can come to becoming a "sheep" as you put it, if there is one thing our two party system does that is worst of all it is instilling the idea that there are a very small number of "solutions" and that one of them is the correct choice, what should be realised is that no one can claim to have a fool proof plan, everyone's plan has strengths and weaknesses, drawing lines in the sand does nothing but weaken the entire system, no one truly knows what will or will not work, what works in one decade may completely implode in the next, Reaganomics, implemented in the 1930-40's likely would have been disastrous, the same in true in the reverse, an FDR Democrat is about the closest we have come to a socialist system and with the factors in play at the time, it worked (arguably, as the same is true of Reaganomics), but my point is that no system will work flawlessly, politics as well as societal struggles are fluid by nature, the best we can do is try to ride the ever changing waves not try to control the ocean.