June 15, 2008
Dismayed Republicans emerge as Barack Obama supporters
Sarah Baxter
WHAT do the daughter of Richard Nixon, a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and the son of Milton Friedman, the monetarist economist, have in common? They are all Obamacons: conservatives, Republicans and free market champions who support Barack Obama, the Democratic party nominee, for president.
The Obama campaign has a sharp-eyed political operations team tasked with seeking out prominent endorsers “on both sides of the aisle”, according to a campaign official. It came tantalisingly close to securing one of the biggest names in politics when Colin Powell, secretary of state during President George W Bush’s first term in office, said last week that he might vote for Obama.
Powell said Obama and John McCain, his Republican opponent, “have the qualifications to be president, but both of them cannot be”. He added that he would neither vote for Obama because he was African-Ameri-can nor for McCain because of his military service but for the individual who “brings the best set of tools to the problems of 21st-century America . . . regardless of party”.
His argument was echoed by Peggy Noonan, a conservative commentator who wrote woundingly in The Wall Street Journal last week that: “Mr McCain is the old America, of course; Mr Obama the new.” Although she did not explicitly back either candidate, she said: “America is always looking forward, not back, it is always in search of the fresh and leaving the tired. That’s how we started.”
The long war in Iraq, the curtailment of civil liberties and enhancement of executive power in the guise of fighting terror and profligate public spending by Bush and Congress have turned off a number of high-profile Republicans. Richard Nixon’s daughter Julie Nixon Eisenhower, who is married to a grandson of President Dwight Eisenhower and co-chairs her father’s presidential library, has donated the maximum $2,300 to Obama’s campaign.
Susan Eisenhower, her sister-in-law, is another lifelong Republican and Obamacon. “I think everybody has different reasons but I think he’s seen as a fresh start for this country, and people like what they see,” she said.
-------------------------
Bruce Bartlett, the author of Impostor, an influential critique of Bush’s overspending and “betrayal” of Reagan’s legacy, said many conservatives were attracted as much by Obama’s temperament as his policies.
“He just seems like a thoughtful guy,” he said. “John McCain is not getting a lot of enthusiasm from Republicans – there is feigned enthusiasm, but there are not a lot of pure McCain Republicans out there.”
--------------------
Jeffrey Hart, a former speechwriter for Reagan and editor of National Review, a leading conservative journal, predicted that Obama could win the election “handily”. It was time to lift the “curse” that had befallen America after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, he argued. “I don’t regard Bush as a conservative, but as a radical and an incompetent one at that,” Hart added. [b]“Conservatism is fact-based, prudent and com-monsensical.” [/b]
Reflecting on Obama’s similarities to Reagan, he said, “Both men can give a public speech which comes over on television as if they are speaking directly to you.” Hillary Clinton, Hart added, lacked their charm: “She pushes people away.”
Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute, a libertarian free market think tank in Washington, said he was “seriously thinking of pulling the lever” for Obama in November. Although he is lukewarm about some of his policies - particularly on free trade and tax and spending - he believes that “the post-partisan, postcultural war rhetoric of Barack Obama is deeply appealing”. There is also the question of pay-back for eight years of Republican mismanagement.
“There is a good chunk of people, like myself, who believe the Republicans ought to go down in flames,” he said. “They have made a complete hash of things and they deserve to pay.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article4138151.ece