This is what it has become. The promise of Goldwater with the pizzazz of Reagan has devolved into a steaming pile of cow dung. Colin Powell realized it (even if a bit two late for some) and is doing his part to save it by endorsing Obama. But as you can imagine … all the credit his fellow party members were willing to dole out to him a month ago is now toast … and all that’s left is the belittling name calling and sad spin:
Now that the most prominent military figure of our era – also a lifelong Republican, also George W. Bush’s first Secretary of State, also a friend of John McCain’s for 25 years – has publicly endorsed Barack Obama, it will be fascinating to behold the McCain surrogates and under-the-radar whisperers as they try to spin this one away. Maybe we’ll get variations of these:
1. Colin Powell has no credibility anymore, ever since he lied at the United Nations.
2. Colin Powell, a longtime moderate and supporter of abortion, has never been a real Republican anyway.
3. Colin Powell lives in McLean, Virginia, and we all know that Northern Virginia is not the “real” Virginia.
4. ACORN put him up to it.
5. Black people always stick together.
6. We’ve still got Joe the Plumber.
Colin Powell’s symbolic power
And he’s merely the last of a long line of moderate and/or pragmatic conservatives that are jumping from the ship before it takes on water. Some of the unlikeliest of candidates:
Ken Adelman is a lifelong conservative Republican. Campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001. Adelman’s friendship with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their wives goes back to the sixties, and he introduced Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz at a Washington brunch the day Reagan was sworn in.
In recent years, Adelman and his friends Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz fell out over his criticisms of the botching of the Iraq War. Still, he remains a bona-fide hawk (”not really a neo-con but a con-con”) who has never supported a Democrat for President in his life. Two weeks from now that’s going to change: Ken Adelman intends to vote for Barack Obama. He can hardly believe it himself.
Neocon Iraq War Promoter Adelman Endorses Obama
It’s easy to blame this on the war or the economy or even Katrina. But in reality the blame goes squarely to the party’s most visible member – President George W Bush. Under his leadership (or lack thereof) the party has engaged in such divisive and brazenly corrupt behavior that even the enemies of the Clintons had to cringe. And the result? Rubble:
A column, like a good movie, should have an arc — start here, end there and somehow connect the two. So this column will begin with the speech Condi Rice made to the Republican National Convention in 2000 in praise of George W. Bush and end with Colin Powell’s appearance Sunday on “Meet the Press” in praise of Barack Obama. Between the first and the second lie the ruins of the GOP, a party gone very, very wrong.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Bush and now John McCain have constructed a mean, grumpy, exclusive, narrow-minded and altogether retrograde Republican Party. It has the sharp scent of the old Barry Goldwater GOP — the angry one of 1964 and not the one perfumed by nostalgia — that is home, by design or mere dumb luck, to those who think that Obama is “The Madrassian Candidate.” Karl Rove, take a bow.
It is worth remembering that both Rice and Powell spoke to that Philadelphia convention. And it is worth recalling, too, that Bush ran as a “compassionate conservative” and had compiled a record as Texas governor to warrant the hope, if not the belief, that he was indeed a different sort of Republican. When he ran for re-election as governor in 1998, he went from 15 percent of the black vote to 27 percent, and from 28 percent of the Hispanic vote to an astounding 49 percent. Here was a coalition-builder of considerable achievement.
Now, all this is rubble …
Those of us who traveled with Bush in the 2000 campaign could tell that when he spoke of education, of the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” he meant it. Education, along with racial and ethnic reconciliation, was going to be his legacy. Then came 9/11, Afghanistan and finally the misbegotten war in Iraq. After that, nothing else really mattered. But just as Bush could not manage the wars, he could not manage his own party. His legacy is not merely in tatters. It does not, as he intended, even exist.
In the end, Powell was determined not to be one of the GOP’s useful idiots. Those moderates willing to overlook the choice of Palin, those capable of staying in a party where, soon enough, she could be an important or dominant force, retain the intellectual nimbleness that enabled them to persist in championing a war fought for duplicitous reasons and extol cultural values they do not for a minute share. Powell walked away from that, and others will follow — the second time that a senator from Arizona has led the GOP into the political wilderness.
RealClearPolitics – Articles – Powell Leaves the GOP Rubble
When will people learn that successful politics has and always will happen in the middle. You can set the agenda with your extremists, but you will never achieve political success when the fringe is running the show. You need real leadership and not party tricks or intimidation. McCain lost this election when he stopped being himself and started being George Maverick Bush. Don’t take it from me, this post on moderatevoices.com sums it all up:
I look up to Colin Powell.
He’s a fellow black man that happens to be a moderate Republican like myself. When there was speculation back in the mid-90s that he might run for president, I was hopeful. Here was a black man who had a real shot at the White House. When he became Secretary of State under Bush, I was excited that we had our first African American Secretary of State, a black man sharing the world stage.
But it wasn’t sheer racial pride that has made me an admire of the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was a moderate in his party. Save one other person, he was the head of a more moderate face of the party, one that was inclusive and spoke to our dreams and hopes and not simply our fears.
So, when Colin Powell decides to break with his party and support Barack Obama, that says something to me.
It’s not as Rush Limbaugh says about a black guy supporting a black guy. What is says is how the GOP has lost centrists and independents that are key to helping the party win. If it were simply race, then Powell would have endorsed him long ago. No, this is about the dead end that the GOP, Colin Powell’s party, MY party has reached- it has done everything to focus on the base and the result come November 4 is that it will for a time, be an undignified rump,having scared off everyone that could have made it a winning party.
When this election season began in January, I was pulling for John McCain. He was the only one that I wanted. When it was Minnesota’s turn to vote, I supported him in the GOP caucus. I knew that he had a good environmental record and a solid history of reaching accross the isle. I knew he was a centrist conservative that could bring our nation together.
But he had to face the current GOP and that meant changing. I tired to hang on, knowing that this is what one has to do to get elected. The election is the silly season.
But what has soured me on McCain is what has soured Powell- the choice of a someone that isn’t ready to be President. Maybe McCain thought he had to please his base. But in doing so, he scared off moderates and independents and even a few conservatives in the long run.
And maybe that shows one of the mistakes of the McCain campaign: he forgot to take care of HIS base: moderates and independents, moderate Republicans and Democrats that appealed to his way of governing. His focus on drilling, allowed Democrats to effectively paint him as against the environment when his record suggested otherwise. His willingness to focus on tax cuts, something he once opposed, again allowed his opponents to paint him as a big spender. Both moves frustrated his original supporters.
During the final debate, McCain said that he wasn’t President Bush and that Senator Obama should not run against the President. One wonders, why didn’t he say something like that six months ago? What if he proposed a new agenda, a new conservatism?
Like Mr. Powell, I still think McCain is a good person at heart. But he has not given people like Powell and myself a reason to support him. I think Powell’s decision is something that is taking place among many Republicans tired of shenanigans of the last few years. Many of us hoped the Arizona Senator would chart a new course, but it didn’t turn out the way we expected.
What Limbaugh and to some extent, McCain, miss is that moderates and independents are important to a party’s success. The old strategy of the base plus one can’t cut it.
Ronald Reagan showed us a conservatism that was inclusive and expansive. For some reason, his followers in the GOP have missed that message. In his 1977 speech called “The New Republican Party,” Reagan had this to say:
And just to set the record straight, let me say this about our friends who are now Republicans but who do not identify themselves as conservatives: I want the record to show that I do not view the new revitalized Republican Party as one based on a principle of exclusion. After all, you do not get to be a majority party by searching for groups you won’t associate or work with. If we truly believe in our principles, we should sit down and talk. Talk with anyone, anywhere, at any time if it means talking about the principles for the Republican Party. Conservatism is not a narrow ideology, nor is it the exclusive property of conservative activists.
McCain forgot to widen the base. Maybe he has been listening to his consultants or hemmed in by the far right, but it shows that we Republicans have forgotten what Reagan told us so long ago.
What I hope is that after this election, the seeds of a new Republican party is born. I still believe in the GOP and still think it can change for the better. Yeah, I know that makes me a fool, but I am a conservative and this is my home.
In the end, Colin Powell had to do what he had to do: stand on principle and be true to himself. I just wish that was something John McCain had done.
Colin, John and Me
I hope that in 8 years we aren’t saying the same thing about the left, but history says that we will. Don’t know what form it will take (abortion, crime, foreign policy, etc.) but surely there’ll be some reason for Americans to want a new change – perhaps to a leaner, meaner, more inclusive and more on point GOP. Certainly all politicians can learn from the abject failure of the last 8 years, seemingly an idealogical bookend on America’s shelf.
All we need to do is keep the car in the middle lane – and to do that we need a good driver. Our current driver was drunk, veered off to the right and ran us into a tree. And his party wasn’t wearing a seat belt.
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