Posted by First we heard about “Bright Republicans,” now “Republicans for Obama?” Jim Leach, Republican U.S. Representative from Iowa for 30 years (from 1977 to 2007), endorses Barack Obama.
I don’t know that many eyebrows were raised when Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut Dem turned Independent (but who caucuses with Dems), endorsed McCain last year. This will surprise more, I suspect.
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I think it is important to note that Jim Leach is a “former” republican representative from Iowa.
Obamacans have been active for some time. Former RI Sen. Lincoln Chafee, former CT Gov and Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr., and former IL Rep. John B. Anderson all already endorsed Obama. Bob Novak wrote that most insiders expect Colin Powell and possibly sitting NE Sen. Chuck Hagel to endorse Obama before November.
From my anecdotal experience, there are basically two kinds of Obamacans around here. The first are Rockefeller Republicans like Chafee and Weicker; social liberals and fiscal conservatives who are frustrated with the Bush administration’s shameless baiting of certain segments of the religious right and their utter inability to control spending or get any results for the money.
The second type are working class and middle class Republicans, including some pretty socially conservative folks, who have come to view the DC GOP as a bunch of cheating hypocrites over the course of this administration and trust Obama even if they don’t always agree with him.
On the flip side, there will be plenty of Reagan Dems in the Rust Belt and Appalachia that don’t trust Obama and won’t vote for him but I believe there will be a lot more folks who voted for Bush in 2004 taking out their buyer’s remorse on Mccain this November.
Wait, wait, Mayor Bright didn’t make this up!?
I CRY FOUL! A POX UPON BOTH YOUR HOUSES! I’M OUT OF ORDER? I’M ORDER? YOU’RE OUT OF ORDER!! THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS OUT OF ORDER!!
It’s obvious to everyone here that Bobby Bright is orchestrating national Liberal Democrat policy, and trying to obfuscate his real record of strident socialism and buggery!!
SamfordDem, you sound like such an intelligent young man. I majored in political science in college just like you are doing. It is a true shame that your liberal leanings have allowed you to get in with the “Obama/Bright crowd.”
Son, see the light before you become “brainwashed” any further. The conservative, republican agenda is the one that you need to be following. It just kills me to see young men, such as yourself, get involved in this “change for the sake of change” mindset.
Come on over to the other side, we need bright young men like you carrrying the GOP banner here in Alabama!
SamfordDem, don’t listen to tired old LD. You are the future and the future belongs to us.
LD I agree. The votes of these former liberal GOP pols will easily be offset by the rural white democrats. Also look at the recent comments made by the democrat Governor in Tennessee and some of Hillarys top supporters….all is not well on the democrat side. Btw you guys brought up Mayor Bright…do any of you know if he’s going to the democrat convention? Ronnie Musgrove and Congressmen Gene Taylor and Travis Childers over in Mississippi have said their not.
Bright commented some time ago that he would not attend the convention as he will be busy campaigning throughout the district.
And not because he doesn’t want to be associated with Pelosi, Reid, Obama & Co…
(re: Fo-fiver)
and probably cause he needs to be concerned about being the mayor of the city (not that he’s concerned about that to this point)
he should be concerned about being the mayor of a city with a high murder rate, terrible city schools and a 10% sales tax rate. yeah – we really need that leadership in DC.
There you go, LD (re comment #1), I added the years of service.
re: post 6. Given the plead deal struck in the Mississippi Beef Plant case this week, Musgrove will probably be indicted by the justice department before the November election.
“Eisenhower is one of a small but symbolically powerful group of what Obama recently called “Obamacans”.In an Ideas piece, Avlon defines two new terms entering the political lexicon.Obama during the primary called Republicans who support him “Obamacans” and the word has entered the political lexicon.
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jnny
Alabama Drug Treatment
LD, I would have to be brainwashed to vote for a Republican presidential candidate after the past eight years.
They say these “Obamacans” are socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Nothing could be further from the truth. Any Republican that goes to Obama’s side is endorsing the policies of Vladimir Lenin. These people are political whores sacrificing whatever values of conservatism they could have scraped up out of their pork barrel spending twisted minds to ride what they see as the rising tide of a weak but wildly popular socialist community organizer. Hagel nor Chaffee are fiscally conservative in any sense of the word- simply moderate wimpy “conservatives” who will spend however many of the taxpayer dollars are needed to keep their seats, and look where that got Chaffee. The term “Obamacon” is one of the most tremendous oxymoronic terms of political endearment in history.
Instapundit notes a Newsweek article that calls ‘Obama Republicans’ “mythical”:
[QUOTE]But are there enough rank-and-file Republicans whispering their support at Obama rallies to actually make a difference on Election Day? As I discovered from examination the last 18 months of head-to-head general election polls, the answer seems to be “no.” In fact, John McCain’s share of the Democratic vote has typically–and surprisingly–been larger than Obama’s share of the Republican vote. In other words, it’s not that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scared the Obamacan masses off, as some pundits have theorized–it’s that they never existed (in any unprecedented way) to begin with.[QUOTE]
http://www.pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/archives2/022847.php
The lunacy behind Republicans crossing over for democrats like Obama is uncanny. It’s like having a scab on your leg that sometimes itches, and saying “you know what, I’m sick of this scab, so I’m going to cut off my whole leg. It’ll make me cool anyways, right?”
It is almost as crazy as working class people in rustbelt states voting for the “let them eat cake” Republicans.
Reactionary, I believe that might be an accurate description of the South and and the Northeast but it absolutely underestimates Obama’s appeal to western Republicans. He polls competitively in every state west of Texas except Utah. The Dakotas, Montana, Alaska, even Idaho all went heavily for Bush but polling shows those states within five point margins.
Will he win all those states? Not likely, but the simple fact that he is polling so close in those places shows how much smaller the GOP’s geographic base has become since the days of Reagan and that is mostly thanks to Karl Rove’s scorched earth electoral strategy (I’m not convinced the GOP can even hold onto to the Deep South this time around).
I should have said they can’t hold onto the WHOLE Deep South, I think Georgia will flip. Mississippi possibly also. Alabama has a shot – and will be closer than most expect – but it would be close to miraculous to pull that off. Same will be true for SC, ARK, and LA. Obama’s camp won’t need that many Republicons to win GA anyway. A few that went for Bush will need to flip, but the gains he makes will mostly come from increased turnout among blacks, young voters, and older liberal-leaning Democrats combined with decreased evangelical turnout and the changing demographics and political attitudes of the ever growing young professional class.
That’s ridiculous. Do you think this is McCain’s first rodeo? huhh? the western base is where some of McCain’s most prevalent support is coming from. Arizona, Idaho, Utah, even Wyoming. Montana and Colorado have been largely blue states for the past two cycles, and the only reason Nevada’s in danger is because of the resurgence of the LP out there, not because of Obama’s popularity. As for the Deep South, all it’s going to take for McCain is to outline the radical associations of Barack, tax increases, and socialist aspirations of the chosen one, and it will be once again an electoral landslide in the Deep South. There is not a significant enough black population for Barack to pull through in any of these states, and even still most of them probably aren’t going to vote anyways. Most old Strom Thurmond democrats are going to vote for the conservative candidate anyways. Florida will go red as well ,I guarantee it. the race is still going to go back to the midwestern populist holdouts, where free enterprise and the AFL-CIO still go head to head, IE Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
oh, yeah, Obama can’t win since he says no no no to drill drill drill since he’s a communist sympathiser actually endorsed by the American communist party.
Sanford Dem:
This list don’t exactly represent the heart and soul of the GOP:
Former RI Sen. Lincoln Chafee – A lightweight trading off his daddy’s name. A Republican only b/c his dad was and so that the GOP governor at the time would appoint him to replace his dad when he died. Wrote in Bush 41 in 2004.
former CT Gov and Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr., – He’s the reason Joe Lieberman’s in the Senate. William F. Buckley and his family started a pac and supported democrat Lieberman over this RINO. Looks like Buckley was prescient. No self-respecting Republican would want Weicker’s support.
former IL Rep. John B. Anderson – ran an independent campaign against RONALD REAGAN in 1980. The Ron Paul of his era.
Colin Powell – not surprising. Remember it was his people that outed Valerie Plame, but somehow it’s Rove-Cheney’s fault.
NE Sen. Chuck Hagel – the politician nobody wanted. Flirted with running for pres as republican, democrat, independent – alienated everyone to the point he can’t run again for senate – and, actually, there’s a story out today that he won’t endorce either McCain or Obama – probably getting to see Obama’s ineptness up close and personal on the world tour made him wise up
Even McCain admits that Arizona is a battleground state, my friend. If you don’t win your home state, you won’t win the White House. Utah is obviously going to go GOP, but even Idaho has gotten closer and closer. Look at the polling in all those states. Obama was leading in Alaska by five points in a recent poll for crying out loud. Like I said, he won’t win all these states, but that just shows how soft Mccain’s base of support is.
SamfordDem,
Aside from recent polls, let’s get back to your impending party switch. Now listen closely to LD, for he is the bearer of much wisdom. He is absolutely correct: the conservative GOP banner is most certainly in need of your help. For just yesterday, their Alabama grand hierarchy hid behind a large fictitious check branded with the names of liberal no-goods “Nancy Pelosi and friends” asking the now solidified front runner Bobby Bright (see http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/news/1218615418122840.xml&coll=2) to return their money. Contrary to the belief that these neanic musings and spiteful charades work, their tactics simply aren’t front page news. (see Section B, Montgomery Advertiser) They are starving for new ideas and innovation and you, SamfordDem, would be a step in the right direction.
Now I as well as anyone do agree with some of the “conservative Republican” economic platform. Who doesn’t, SamfordDem? I don’t enjoy paying taxes, nor do I want the government balancing their budget in the same Kerouacian fashion that I adhere to. But I personally don’t see any of the schools of economic theory as impervious to fault. If one were infallible, there wouldn’t be any others, right? So how about we look for individuals who can think pragmatically and make decisions based on the facts of circumstance, not on the whims of their ethnocentrically developed economic ideology?
I’m certainly not a big fan of the welfare, especially when it’s served up as more of a crutch than a yank up. So SamfordDem, I too was a little alarmed with the bailout of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stockholders on the taxpayer tit. Now this maneuver was not a smather of plaster across a pillar of the mortgage industry as we’ve been told, but rather, it was a bailout of stockholders that were victims of corporate and administrative malfeasance at the same time that the taxpayer tit can also be charged with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s federal lobbying fees as well. Which this development does bode well for a young novice like myself to the stocks and bonds trading industry, because now I’m assuming I can buy whichever clown stocks I want, and the government will guarantee them. Now is this the classical school or the Keynesian school?
I’m certain that the screen name Thomas Jefferson is going to be quick to point out that I’m not properly educated on monetarism or on Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom. What I am well aware of is the insignificant role that tax cuts and stimulus payments have on the economy, at least in the long run. I know that we all credit Reagan with single-handedly defeating inflation by lowering taxes in 1981, but the reality there is that Fed Chairman Volcker made the U.S. take its medicine and those tax cuts did nothing. If tax cuts work, why didn’t Carter get a little credit for handing out the crème-de-la-crème of wealthy tax cuts, the capital gains? Whew Baby, that’s the big one. Carter helped to lower it from 39% to 28% in 1978. If deregulation is the answer, then what about when Carter helped deregulate airlines, trucking, and even oil? I guess it wasn’t cool then because we never saw individual worker productivity improve. What about tax cuts stimulating investment and expunging counter-cyclic spending? Well, even after Reagan’s tax cuts and further deregulation, investment dwindled from 18.6% in the 70s to 17.4% in the 80s, while government spending almost doubled (2.55% to 4.22%). What the hell? Someone please explain.
So SamfordDem, while I’m not claiming to have all the answers, what I am claiming is that I don’t know anyone who does, other than my grandfather, god rest his soul. So go ahead, go on over, they’re going to need you.
That wasn’t Jimmy Carter lowering the capital gains tax, I can tell you that much. Don’t forget he instituted Josef Stalin’s solution to declining government revenue- the “windfall profits” tax, whatever a windfall profit is. And the slight investment downturn you saw in the eighties was due to increased amount of cash in hand given by tax cuts to consumers. Consumers spent more out of pocket from their paychecks because of lessened witholding, while businesses were able to spend more in resarch, development, and the big one here, HIRING! Investment’s slight drop during the eighties was not a direct cause of deregulation and tax cuts- it was an inverse reaction to more spending by the private sector rather than investment itself. Notice how stimulated the economy was by the tax cuts, regardless. Oh, how I miss Reagan. so so very much.