Colin Powell Hates America

[dlgood]

Colin Powell discusses the presidential election on Meet the Press.

Follow-up interview, discussion afterwards...

We'll see what comes of this later. Powell has generally been respected, though also criticized. I don't know that it'll make much a difference, and his critics will make themselves heard, but it's a clear statement against the negativism of the last few weeks.

Comments

[a2zmom.livejournal.com]

I was so glad to hear his straight forward statements regarding that.

[a-white-rain.livejournal.com]

Anyone who says he hates America totally missed the point.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

Sure. I'm being facetious with the header. I suspect the general counter will be what Rush Limbaugh started with, that Powell is putting Obama's race ahead of any principles.

[a-white-rain.livejournal.com]

Oh I should have made that clear - I was talking to the general you and people who are already calling him a traitor or whatever (because clearly party lines are define you as an American and not the values you hold dear, like, say the idea that anyone can be president and Muslims who have died in service to our country deserve as much respect as Christians). I figured you were facetious. Sorry!

[maquisleader.livejournal.com]

Even tho Powell is a Republican and generally conservative, anyone who didn't see this endorsement coming a mile off is living in another, parallel universe.

I have to agree that the Republican party has moved too far to the right, but the Democrats have moved too far to the left. There's a lot of us stranded in the middle with no real choice except the lesser of evils.

Some days I'd like to wake up in the Trek universe of the 24th century. Le sigh...

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

What's notable about Powell is that he's the latest in a growing list of conservatives and republicans to endorse Obama over McCain. It's probably an even bigger impact than Christopher Buckley last week.

And we're also seeing a lot of Conservative newspapers - papers that have never endorsed a Democrat - endorsing Obama over McCain. Papers that backed Bush - the Denver Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Kansas City Star, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Salt Lake Tribune. I don't know that these endorsements will make a huge difference, but it probably means something.

but the Democrats have moved too far to the left.

Not in 2006, they didn't. Democrats won by running candidates across the board. They picked off a lot of formerly Republican offices in "Red" states by running candidates that appealed at the local level, sometimes candidates that were far more conservative than the rest of the Democrats were - in part because the Rightward shift of the republicans created a lot of space. Jim Webb of Virginia was a particularly good example of that.

In this past cycle, they've won special elections in Mississippi, Lousiana and Missouri by running very conservative candidates.

You're certainly entitled to consider both parties too extreme - but if you look at the younger members in elective office in each the Republicans are trying to purge moderates and solidify ideological purity while the democrats appear to be looking to fill the vaccuum that Republican strategy has created.

[maquisleader.livejournal.com]

I guess I stay away from the big parties because they both seem to have an "all or none" ideology. Especially the Republicans. The old lady at the McCain headquarters whispering at me -- kid you not! -- that some of my friends voting for Obama probably believed in abortion just cracked me up!

After I said I do, too, I got the feeling I really wasn't welcome in their little group. Which is okay, I don't want to share the kool-aid.

Republicans do need some youth, at the McCain office there was only old people. The local university, however, no longer has a young Republican group. Which is very telling, imho.

We'll have to see how this all plays out. We're living in very interesting times.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

As a party, you have to decide what it is you want to be about, and how you want to balance your ideals with practicality. Because if you don't get elected, you can't actually turn your ideals into policy.

The Democrats have generally decided that they'd rather win as many elections as they can with whatever candidates they can, and try to cobble as much an agenda as they can out of a lot of very disparate parts. They haven't really done much coherent in the 110th congress though.

The Republicans, particularly the younger wing of the party, has been pretty fundamental on ideas... figuring voters prefer party that is sure in it's ideals and policies even at the cost of rigidity or alienating moderates. It's the idea that compromise is capitulation and something to be rejected not encouraged.

It worked for them sporadically in the 90s, and certainly in the 2002 and 2004 elections. It's not going to work this year, mostly because the policies and performance of the Bush Administration and Republican congress are so discredited and so disliked - and they can't run against "Washington" because they are Washington.

The test will be, if they get knocked completely out of power... The Republicans went from complete control over the government to only having the Court and maybe the white house. Will they go to the middle or decide that they lost because they weren't conservative enough.

Given the authoritarian bent of the republican party leadership, I think they'll still go right.

[maquisleader.livejournal.com]

One reason that McCain didn't pick Lieberman (I think that's the one) is because he's not pro-life and they didn't want to alienate the Republican base. But I wonder if that section of their base isn't getting smaller with time. The younger Republicans seem less... fanatic about it.

If McCain wanted to be a true maverick, he should have declared himself an Independent and taken his chances. If Ross Perot can get a big chunk of the vote, you know McCain could.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

It seems pretty clear that Sarah Palin was not McCain's preferred choice for VP, but a choice he felt somewhat pushed to make, by both circumstances and the party base.

If McCain wanted to be a true maverick, he should have declared himself an Independent and taken his chances. If Ross Perot can get a big chunk of the vote, you know McCain could.

Based upon fame, resume, and persona... yeah. But structurally, no. It can be very hard to get offices up in every state, to get yourself on all the ballots, and to have ads and things out everywhere.

Perot put a ton of his personal wealth into the election, and I don't know that Cindy McCain could have afforded (or even wanted) to expose her own wealth in that way. And I'm not sure that McCain would have had the organizaitonal skills required to run on his own.

Whether or not he had any inclination to do so, I would imagine he would have viewed Teddy Roosevelt's 1912 3rd Party campaign (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Party_(United_States,_1912)) as instructive.

But more specifically, he could still have more effectively positioned himself as a maverick, even without dropping from the Republican party - he'd just do a stronger job of distancing his future plans from some recent republican policies.

It's not enough, for a lot of voters, for McCain to point out his maverick stands in the past - he has to paint a specific departure from Repulican orthodoxy he intends in the future. And he hasn't done that. Which is why Obama keeps pushing the "he voted with Bush 90% of the time" angle.

What it ends up looking like, is that McCain (1) either isn't really a maverick after all or (2) wants to be a maverick but can't impose his will upon his own supporters. Either of which hurts him when trying to woo remaining voters that are genuinely undecided between McCain or Obama.

So on a test of "is he leading his party in a new direction or just getting pulled along" McCain isn't doing that. Obama does that in his rhetoric, but it's still a matter of hope to see whether he could manage a democratic congress once they've all won an election. Bill Clinton certainly couldn't.