Tuesday, May 08, 2007

KEY BUSH SUPPORTERS TURN TO OBAMA



SARAH BAXTER, TIMES, UK - Disillusioned supporters of President George W
Bush are defecting to Barack Obama, the Democratic senator for Illinois,
as the White House candidate with the best chance of uniting a divided
nation. Tom Bernstein went to Yale University with Bush and co-owned the
Texas Rangers baseball team with him. In 2004 he donated the maximum
$2,000 to the president's reelection campaign and gave $50,000 to the
Republican National Committee. This year he is switching his support to
Obama. He is one of many former Bush admirers who find the Democrat
newcomer appealing.

Matthew Dowd, Bush's chief campaign strategist in 2004, announced last
month that he was disillusioned with the war in Iraq and the president's
"my way or the highway" style of . . . Although Dowd has yet to endorse
a candidate, he said the only one he liked was Obama. . .

Last week a surprising new name joined the chorus of praise for the
antiwar Obama รข€“ that of Robert Kagan, a leading neoconservative and
co-founder of the Project for the New American Century in the late
1990s, which called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Kagan is an
informal foreign policy adviser to the Republican senator John McCain,
who remains the favored neoconservative choice for the White House
because of his backing for the troops in Iraq.

But in an article in the Washington Post, Kagan wrote approvingly that a
keynote speech by Obama at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs was
"pure John Kennedy", a neocon hero of the cold war.

In his speech, Obama called for an increase in defence spending and an
extra 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 marines to "stay on the offense"
against terrorism and ensure America had "the strongest, best-equipped
military in the world". He talked about building democracies, stopping
weapons of mass destruction and the right to take unilateral action to
protect US "vital interests" if necessary, as well as the importance of
building alliances. "Personally, I liked it," Kagan wrote. . .

Financiers have also been oiling Obama's campaign. In Chicago, his home
town, John Canning, a "Bush pioneer" and investment banker who pledged
to raise $100,000 for the president in 2004, has given up on the
Republicans. . .

According to figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics in
Washington, Obama and Clinton have vacuumed up more than $750,000 in
individual contributions from former Bush donors.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1752381.ece


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WHY OBAMA ATTRACTS THE RIGHT

SAM SMITH - Harry Truman remarked that whenever anyone said they were
bipartisan he knew they were going to vote against him. Barrack Obama is
the latest major politician to use this ploy, promising mushy
abstractions instead of actual policies, making nice to everyone in the
room while ducking the issues they raise and, in a time of historic
confrontation over whether America can recover its constitutional
democracy, pretending that the answer is somewhere in the middle.

But what is the middle ground between democracy and fascism? Between
having a job or a house or being unemployed or homeless? Between having
health care or dying?

As William Lloyd Garrison put it, "Tell a man whose house is on fire to
give moderate alarm; tel1 him to moderately rescue his wife from the
hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe
from the fire into which it has fallen."

The myth of the happy center is a major illusion dominating public life
in Washington. But the truth is that from that internecine struggle of
two factions of the American middle known as the Civil War to FBI
assaults on activist organizations in the 60s and 70s, from the Palmer
raids to anti-terrorism legislation, Americans have traditionally had
more to fear from people they have elected than from those on the
fringes of politics. In fact, the latter have often served largely as an
excuse for the American center to tighten its grip on the political and
economic system. This is not to say that the left and the right would
not enjoy being just as violent and repressive given the chance, but the
American center has rarely allowed that.

Even the KKK, so often cited as an example of the sort of threat the
non-center poses, was powerful primarily because it was at the center,
holding political and judicial and law enforcement office as well as
hiding beneath its robes. In some towns, lynching parties were even
announced in the local paper. And in the 1920s, both the Colorado
governor and mayor of Denver were members of the Klan, the latter well
enough regarded to have had Stapleton airport named after him.

The centrist myth most dramatically fails when those acting upon it
dramatically fail. What is the center on Iraq? On climate change? On
the creeping coup taking over America? On the monopolization of the
marketplace?

A 10,000 word piece in the New Yorker - purveyor of the appropriate to
the liberal elite - features Obama as the "conciliator" with hardly a
solid program or policy mentioned. The message of the article - like
Obama's - is that we don't need a president, just a therapist.

Take healthcare for example:

"'We've got to put more money in prevention,' he said. "It makes no
sense for children to be going to the emergency room for treatable
ailments like asthma. Twenty per cent of our patients who have chronic
illnesses account for eighty per cent of the costs, so it's absolutely
critical that we invest in managing those with chronic illnesses like
diabetes. If we hire a case manager to work with them to insure that
they're taking the proper treatments, then potentially we're not going
to have to spend thirty thousand dollars on a leg amputation.' A young
man asked about health care for minorities. 'Obesity and diabetes in
minority communities are more severe,' Obama said, "so I think we need
targeted programs, particularly to children in those communities, to
make sure that they've got sound nutrition, that they have access to
fruits and vegetables and not just Popeyes, and that they have decent
spaces to play in instead of being cooped up in the house all day.'"

So just eat your vegetables and stay away from Popeyes and all will be
fine.

Pressed on the matter, Obama does go a little deeper:

"'If you're starting from scratch," he says, 'then a single-payer
system' -a government-managed system like Canada's, which disconnects
health insurance from employment- 'would probably make sense. But we've
got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition, as
well as adjusting the culture to a different system, would be difficult
to pull off. So we may need a system that's not so disruptive that
people feel like suddenly what they've known for most of their lives is
thrown by the wayside.'"

Since ordinary people could adapt, say, to the expansion of the Medicare
system in a matter of days, who are these people of whom Obama speaks
who might "feel like suddenly what they've known for most of their lives
is thrown by the wayside?" Well, the insurance companies would be the
ones most affected, and Obama has just sent a clear if covert signal
that he won't be messing with them.

The right understands the centrist myth far better than liberals. They
know that the center is homeland security for inaction in public, lots
of action behind the scenes, and power staying where it should: with the
powerful. It's not surprising that some of them see Obama as their man,
the "black Reagan" as he has been called.

Yet he is also the liberals' Pat Robertson, and while the right can see
where they can cut deals with him, the liberal evangelicals are all
misty eyed by his talk of hope and faith. But Harry Truman was right:
that guy serving you the happy meals of centrism in the campaign is
likely going to be on the other side after election day.

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