A Profile of Robert Vargas

A self-professed "IT geek" and network administrator living in the Midwest, Rob Vargas is a 42-year-old husband and father. He's worked in information technology for 11 years and is an Iraq veteran who served aboard a submarine during Desert Storm.

Vargas spent about seven years in the Navy. Besides Desert Storm, Vargas also served aboard a submarine beneath Hurricane Hugo, as it hit Charleston, SC in 1989. Sustaining only a broken car window during the storm, Vargas considers himself lucky. He was nevertheless amazed, he said, by people's strength as they rallied around one another to get to solve community problems.

Following his military services, Vargas experienced a prolonged period of unemployment, having to rely on the government for assistance for the first and only time in his life. A lifetime Republican, Vargas had followed in the footsteps of his father, but his post-military unemployment forced him to rethink his ideas about government.

"That experience taught me that government solutions… aren’t," Vargas says. "Week after week, I had to report in to the unemployment office and tell them 'I can’t,' and I felt the drain of doing that. I could never again feel government is a solution to problems."

Vargas began researching conservative ideology and seeking out conservative viewpoints. He discovered Rush Limbaugh and Thomas Paine, who in Vargas' opinion, are two of the most inflammatory advocates of their respective times.

"The more I read Thomas Paine, the more his vision of freedom and of government became apparent to me," Vargas says. "I felt I shared his ideas."

Lately, Vargas has found himself at odds with the GOP, but he remains as staunchly conservative as ever -- even radically so.

"[However], don’t confuse [me with] a religious-right conservative," Vargas says. "I will never match the eloquence of Thomas Paine, but he was no religiously-based advocate, and neither am I."