Obama's appeal to high priests of US conservatism

[StanOU]

I'll vouch for this trend in Tulsa. Since the December 1st, I've been to three Andrew Rice fundraisers and one Tulsans for Obama meetup and met registered Republicans at three of the four functions. People want a change of direction and they are willing to break with their party to get it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080622/ts_alt_afp/usvoteobamaconservatives_080622170054

Obama's strange appeal to high priests of US conservatism

by Jitendra JoshiSun Jun 22, 1:00 PM ET

They're called the Obamacons -- the conservative thinkers who are disgusted with the Republicans and are rallying to Democrat Barack Obama as the nation's economic and diplomatic savior.

They are joining younger evangelical leaders who see more to their religious mission than slavish devotion to Republican social mores, and fiscal conservatives who reject the war-fueled spending of President George W. Bush.
"The Bush coalition is dissolving," pollster John Zogby told AFP.

"We have polling showing one-fifth of conservatives supporting Obama," he said.
It seems an unlikely alliance, as some of the star intellectual names who have long given philosophical sustenance to Republican rule clamber aboard Obama's bid for the White House.
But thinkers such as Francis Fukuyama, Andrew Sullivan and Andrew Bacevich -- all vehemently opposed to the war in Iraq -- dislike Republican candidate John McCain and see something alluring in his Democratic rival.
Fukuyama, the conservative author of the post-Cold War treatise "The End of History and the Last Man," said on a visit to Sydney last month that the Republicans were a spent force intellectually.

He told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that many on the right of US politics believe "Obama probably has the greatest promise of delivering a different kind of politics" that breaks with decades of Republican orthodoxy.

Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University, believes that after eight years under Bush, the Republicans need to lose November's election to reinvent their thinking and policy platform.
"For conservatives, Obama represents a sliver of hope. McCain represents none at all. The choice turns out to be an easy one," he wrote in The American Conservative magazine.
Among conservative critics, there is often a strong streak of libertarianism that is offended by Bush's war in Iraq, his curbing of constitutional freedoms in the "war on terror" and his swollen budget deficits.

In some cases they are "neoconservatives" who started out as liberals, drifted away from the Democratic Party in search of a more muscular foreign policy, and are now deserting the Republicans in turn.

Specific critics go further in actually endorsing Obama, the first African-American nominee of a major US party whose message of change resonates with thinkers who swim in the shifting currents of history and politics.
Through publications such as National Review, the house organ of Republican seers, conservatives claim to have had the ascendancy of ideas for decades -- a point Obama has acknowledged through his praise of president Ronald Reagan.

But if that tide of ideas is ebbing, that suggests trouble for McCain at a time when the Arizonan is already battling to shore up backing from Republicans mistru****l of his maverick Senate record.

Obama is meanwhile reaching deep into the Republicans' evangelical base, arguing that concern for social justice and environmental stewardship should count as much as fulmination about abortion, gay marriage and gun rights.
"The old mantra of 'guns, God and gonads' just doesn't exclusively define younger Christian conservatives. It's not that they're turning liberal, but they're multi-dimensional," Zogby said.

"John McCain has a bigger opening than I think he realizes, of putting together a different kind of coalition. Right now, he's not doing it. He's playing '90s politics."
Sullivan, who is an atypical high priest of US conservatism in that he is British, gay and Catholic, would welcome that kind of bipartisan coalition -- but sees it coming from Obama rather than the Republicans.

The Illinois senator would end not just the war in Iraq but the war of ideology, Sullivan argued way back in December, before Obama's candidacy truly caught fire with his victory in the Iowa caucuses.

"It is a war about war -- and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama -- and Obama alone -- offers the possibility of a truce," he wrote in The Atlantic.

[tim huntzinger]

As a former life-long GOP voter (quit in '05 before the stampede out the door went national), who votes in 90% of polling questions, I am gladly pulling the ticket for the O!

[Conan71]

High priests of conservatism?  Most rank-and-file GOP voters don't have a clue who these guys are.  If it isn't Hannity, Rush, or O'Reilly, they don't know 'em.  The headline over-hypes and the story under-delivers.  Talk about op-ed posing as news.

Bacevich has become pretty much a single-issue voter since his son was killed in Iraq,  Fukuyama was for the Iraq war before he was against it (he started to flip in about '02), and Sullivan isn't even a U.S. citizen.  He's conservative fiscally, but not in any other fashion and has supported Democrats since '04.  Saying Sullivan is a conservative rings about as true as still calling Arianna Huffington a conservative.

Not terribly uncommon for people of one party to flip to the other side in an election year.  I'm sure there are plenty of articles showing that disenfranchised Hillary voters are going with McCain in the fall.

"In that race (2004), disaffected Republicans were supposed to throw over George Bush for John Kerry. Everyone seemed to know a guy poised to make this jump. At the Kerry campaign, top staffers were regularly fielding calls from big contributors who said they had ready-to-defect GOP friends on the line. Kerry should make a major push for these voters, the callers suggested. The campaign didn't do that, because there was no one to court. In the 2004 exit polls, only 6 percent of Republicans voted for Kerry, fewer than voted for Al Gore in 2000.

At the moment, the parallel seems apt. What we know about Hillary-for-McCain voters comes from the same ready anecdotes, dubious polling, blanket news coverage, and mischief-making from the opposing party. I'm not denying that these voters exist. (They've even got a Web site!) I hear from them a lot. Irma, a 51-year-old Hispanic research scientist, sent a note soon after the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee came up with a solution for seating the Florida and Michigan delegations:

The Democratic party no longer respects the right of the voter to cast a vote. I know that there are thousands if not millions of people who feel just like me. We will not be forced to cast a vote for Barak Obama. I got through the Reagan and the Bush years—I can stomach 4 years of a McCain Presidency.

I checked in with Irma recently. I'd started to hear a second wave of anecdotes about women who first claimed they'd vote for McCain but then switched back after giving Obama a second look. Irma was not one of them. She was even more opposed to Obama after hearing about his stimulus plan and what she saw as his wishy-washy position on Jerusalem. She thinks he's an inexperienced empty suit. "

http://www.slate.com/id/2193470/

[rwarn17588]

Some GOP voters don't need any "high priests."

I know of several Republican voters who are voting Obama because they want to punish the GOP for getting away from its ideals in the past decade or so. They figure the only way to save the GOP is to dismantle it, toss out the charlatans, and build it back into a party of prudence and constitutional reverence.

I'm not going to stop them. I'm one of those former Republicans.

[Conan71]

quote:Originally posted by rwarn17588

Some GOP voters don't need any "high priests."

I know of several Republican voters who are voting Obama because they want to punish the GOP for getting away from its ideals in the past decade or so. They figure the only way to save the GOP is to dismantle it, toss out the charlatans, and build it back into a party of prudence and constitutional reverence.

I'm not going to stop them. I'm one of those former Republicans.

As I always say, no poll is near as important or accurate as the numbers released the day after the election.

A lot of voters make threats especially with the Iraq war being dragged out, high fuel prices, and the sub-prime fiasco.  It's very early in the campaign and the conventions haven't even happened yet.  Both parties have blocs of members who are feeling disaffected and saying they will "take their business elsewhere".  

It's kind of like the powerful Hollywood liberals who were saying they'd move to Canada if Bush got re-elected.  Never happened.

Honestly, I wish we could vote out every last elected official in Washington this year, boot out the special interests and lobbyists and start over from scratch.  That's not going to happen either so it's left to pick the lesser of percieved evils.

[Hoss]

quote:Originally posted by Conan71

quote:Originally posted by rwarn17588

Some GOP voters don't need any "high priests."

I know of several Republican voters who are voting Obama because they want to punish the GOP for getting away from its ideals in the past decade or so. They figure the only way to save the GOP is to dismantle it, toss out the charlatans, and build it back into a party of prudence and constitutional reverence.

I'm not going to stop them. I'm one of those former Republicans.

As I always say, no poll is near as important or accurate as the numbers released the day after the election.

A lot of voters make threats especially with the Iraq war being dragged out, high fuel prices, and the sub-prime fiasco.  It's very early in the campaign and the conventions haven't even happened yet.  Both parties have blocs of members who are feeling disaffected and saying they will "take their business elsewhere".  

It's kind of like the powerful Hollywood liberals who were saying they'd move to Canada if Bush got re-elected.  Never happened.

Honestly, I wish we could vote out every last elected official in Washington this year, boot out the special interests and lobbyists and start over from scratch.  That's not going to happen either so it's left to pick the lesser of percieved evils.

And the guy who jokingly uses a 50s song to indicate he's gonna 'bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran' and also infers that if it takes 100 years we should stay in Iraq is the lesser of those two?

Sorry, I'm not convinced.

[Conan71]

quote:Originally posted by Hoss

quote:Originally posted by Conan71

quote:Originally posted by rwarn17588

Some GOP voters don't need any "high priests."

I know of several Republican voters who are voting Obama because they want to punish the GOP for getting away from its ideals in the past decade or so. They figure the only way to save the GOP is to dismantle it, toss out the charlatans, and build it back into a party of prudence and constitutional reverence.

I'm not going to stop them. I'm one of those former Republicans.

As I always say, no poll is near as important or accurate as the numbers released the day after the election.

A lot of voters make threats especially with the Iraq war being dragged out, high fuel prices, and the sub-prime fiasco.  It's very early in the campaign and the conventions haven't even happened yet.  Both parties have blocs of members who are feeling disaffected and saying they will "take their business elsewhere".  

It's kind of like the powerful Hollywood liberals who were saying they'd move to Canada if Bush got re-elected.  Never happened.

Honestly, I wish we could vote out every last elected official in Washington this year, boot out the special interests and lobbyists and start over from scratch.  That's not going to happen either so it's left to pick the lesser of percieved evils.

And the guy who jokingly uses a 50s song to indicate he's gonna 'bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran' and also infers that if it takes 100 years we should stay in Iraq is the lesser of those two?

Sorry, I'm not convinced.

You pick your poison, I'll pick mine.  I've not made a final decision on a candidate this fall, I tend to vote the person, not the party.  

Seeing as I'm more Libertarian than anything, Barr & Root haven't done much to excite me.  It's getting a bit late now for any serious third party bids.  I'm definitely a disaffected registered Republican.

If Obama started coming up with some believable and achievable policies that agreed with me, I might vote for him.  So far, I've not heard a whole lot out of his camp I agree with.  I don't think he exists to please me so I'm not holding my breath.

[FOTD]

Obama's "America" Speech in Missouri. As Mark Twain, that greatest of American satirists and proud son of Missouri, once wrote, "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." Well said, indeed.
http://thepage.time.com/obamas-prepared-remarks-in-independence-missouri/