http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1752381.ece Republicans defect to the Obama camp Sarah Baxter, Washington DISILLUSIONED supporters of President George W Bush are defecting to Barack Obama, the Democratic senator for Illinois, as the White House candidate with the best chance of uniting a divided nation. Tom Bernstein went to Yale University with Bush and co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team with him. In 2004 he donated the maximum $2,000 to the presidentâs reelection campaign and gave $50,000 to the Republican National Committee. This year he is switching his support to Obama. He is one of many former Bush admirers who find the Democrat newcomer appealing. Matthew Dowd, Bushâs chief campaign strategist in 2004, announced last month that he was disillusioned with the war in Iraq and the presidentâs âmy way or the highwayâ style of leadership â the first member of Bushâs inner circle to denounce the leaderâs performance in office. Although Dowd has yet to endorse a candidate, he said the only one he liked was Obama. âI think we should design campaigns that appeal, not to 51% of the people, but bring the country together as a whole,â Dowd said. Bernstein is a champion of human rights, who admires Obamaâs call for action on Darfur, while Dowdâs opposition to the war has been sharpened by the expected deployment to Iraq of his son, an Arabic-speaking Army intelligence specialist. But last week a surprising new name joined the chorus of praise for the antiwar Obama â that of Robert Kagan, a leading neoconservative and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century in the late 1990s, which called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Kagan is an informal foreign policy adviser to the Republican senator John McCain, who remains the favoured neoconservative choice for the White House because of his backing for the troops in Iraq. But in an article in the Washington Post, Kagan wrote approvingly that a keynote speech by Obama at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs was âpure John Kennedyâ, a neocon hero of the cold war. In his speech, Obama called for an increase in defence spending and an extra 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 marines to âstay on the offenseâ against terrorism and ensure America had âthe strongest, best-equipped military in the worldâ. He talked about building democracies, stopping weapons of mass destruction and the right to take unilateral action to protect US âvital interestsâ if necessary, as well as the importance of building alliances. âPersonally, I liked it,â Kagan wrote. Disagreements on the war have not stopped John Martin, a Navy reservist and founder of the website Republicans for Obama, from supporting the antiwar senator. He joined the military after the Iraq war and is about to be deployed to Afghanistan. âI disagree with Obama on the war but I donât think it is a test of his patriotism,â Martin says. âObama has a message of hope for the country.â Financiers have also been oiling Obamaâs campaign. In Chicago, his home town, John Canning, a âBush pioneerâ and investment banker who pledged to raise $100,000 for the president in 2004, has given up on the Republicans. âI know lots of my friends in this business are disenchanted and are definitely looking for something different,â he said. Not to be outdone, Hillary Clinton has many Republican defectors of her own, including John Mack, chief executive of Morgan Stanley, who helped raise $200,000 for the presidentâs reelection, qualifying him as a âBush rangerâ. He said last week that he was impressed by Clintonâs expertise. âI know weâre associated mainly with the Republicans but weâve always gone for the individual,â Mack said. According to figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, Obama and Clinton have vacuumed up more than $750,000 (£375,000) in individual contributions from former Bush donors. Some of the donations reflect the natural tendency of those with power to shift to the likely White House winner. Penny Pritzker, the staggeringly successful head of fundraising for Obama, voted for John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic candidate, but also donated that year to Bush. As she was a head of the family-run Hyatt hotel chain, it was considered a prudent move. With the Democrats widely expected to win in 2008, Clintonâs status as frontrunner is encouraging Wall Street money to migrate to her, while Obama may be picking up some mischievous âStop Hillaryâ donations from still-loyal Republicans. But there is plenty of genuine enthusiasm to go around. A poll released by Rasmussen last week showed Obama overtaking Clinton for the first time by 32% to 30%, although another poll by Quinnepiac showed her with a 14-point lead over the Illinois senator, her nearest rival. The current issue of the New Yorker contains a profile of Obama, which highlights his appeal to conservatives. For his optimism about the future, Obama has been dubbed the âblack Ronald Reaganâ. He frequently challenges the black community to support two-parent families and encourage school students, instead of criticising them for âacting whiteâ.
Obama is way too liberal for any principled republican to support. He also is way too inexperienced. If he wasn't black, no one would have heard of him. I can't believe how gullible these new found supporters are.
I agree with Beltway. Although I tend to like the guy, Obama is way left of even Hillary, although not fully socialist like Edwards. Not sure the econ could handle the ramp up in taxes. I don't think Obama has a chance this time around, even with his massive fundraising. Give him 8 years though, and the guy is going to be a force.
lol lol lol... @ new found supporters.... obama is 100% a media creation. from the scandal in chicago that allowed him the quick spotlight and win, to his meteoric rise for president.
If Obama is the black Ronald Reagan, than he must be as good an actor and teleprompter reader as Ronnie was...
Fear and hatred of the Clintons by the rethugniklans can go a long way to help Obama, as rethugniklans would fund his campaign just to keep Hillary out of the general election in November...the same way they funded and supported Liberman...as they know that as "color blind" as Americans may claim to be, when the American voter is in that booth alone in November, the reality of a black man vs. a white man would manifest itself, and I also heartily agree that he lacks direct experience to be president. VP perhaps (still a stretch in my mind) but not the president. I think this country will need to see a black man or a woman as VP first, just to get used to the idea before they would have a shot at president. Just ask an Obama supporters to list the 3 major accomplishments of Obama as U.S. Senator, and the silence is crystal clear... One thing is for sure, this guy is ambitious and power hungry as hell...and no one wants to talk about that fact. He wants to be an imperial president, to have the power, to push his vision on America just as much as the rest of them do... Hard to find any of the presidential candidates that really inspires me to think "public servant" above megalomania...
There must be something in my drinking water, but I agree with everything you just said. The real "black" leader I would get behind is Harold Ford Jr, not Obama. Amazing that Ford could run circles around Obama but suddenly Obama is the chosen one. Funny how that works. Something tells me if for some reason the Republicans take the white house in 08, that Ford will be in the race in 2012 and that has to scare the shit out of Obama as he will no longer be the only "articulate black" candidate.
We agree on Ford, he is a moderate, more "plain" spoken, and much more direct and real in my opinion that Obama. It really is a terrible shame IMO that Colin Powell soiled himself so badly by being a good soldier to Bush and Cheney. He could well have been the next president...and I think he could have done a good job in bringing the country back together, as well as repairing many of the broken relationships Bush has generated with other countries around the world. Colin Powell strikes me now as a very sad, nearly tragic figure in American history and politics, perhaps with a decent president he will get a second chance at serving our nation properly.
The 'reality of black man vs. white man' may matter to folks of your generation, but people of my generation (Gen X) don't usually concern themselves about such things.