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Wick Allison came out earlier this week with a formal endorsement of Barack Obama. For those of you who don't know much about Wick, he was asked by William F. Buckley to join the board of directors of the National Review in 1985, and then became the magazine's publisher in 1990, where he remained until 1994. Nobody would discredit Allison's conservative credentials. As he points out in his endorsement, he's been a conservative since 1964, when he organized his local Youth for Goldwater chapter at the age of 16.
Here's part of Allison's take on the presidential race:
What's even more amazing about Allison's endorsement is that it's not an isolated incident. In February, Jeffrey Hart endorsed Barack, even though the primaries were far from over. Hart has been with The National Review since 1962 and is still a senior editor with the magazine.
Here's some of Hart's perspective from his February interview:
Here's part of Allison's take on the presidential race:
[Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.
What's even more amazing about Allison's endorsement is that it's not an isolated incident. In February, Jeffrey Hart endorsed Barack, even though the primaries were far from over. Hart has been with The National Review since 1962 and is still a senior editor with the magazine.
Here's some of Hart's perspective from his February interview:
Allison and Hart are two proud, self-proclaimed conservatives, and they've backed Barack.And so it is that Jeffrey Hart counts himself a member of Obama's “new American majority” -- a group of voters the Illinois senator says are fed up with the partisan excesses and wrangling of the last two decades and eager for a practical, cooperative approach to the issues that have divided Washington.
“It turns out that these political parties are not always either liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican,” Hart, a 77-year-old with thick white hair who lives in Lyme, said in an interview at his home yesterday. “The Democrat, under certain conditions, can be the conservative.”