IDIOTS Who Question Colin Powell's Endorsement Of Barack Obama, Keep Reminding Me That I Need My Head Examined, For Being A Registered Republican!

Colin Powell has been anything but disloyal
By Merlene Davis


Colin Powell, the former secretary of state for President Bush and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama on Sunday.

Almost immediately, Republican loyalists condemned him as a turncoat.

Pat Buchanan, a guest analyst on MSNBC, said Powell endorsed Obama because both men are black.

That is amazing.

This is the same Powell who proudly waved the Republican banner when black people avoided it. It's the same Powell who spoke highly of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and never flinched in his loyalty. And it is the same Powell who drank the Kool-Aid served up by the Bush administration that claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Powell, in his evenness, in his measured thought, made those claims believable even when he spoke at the United Nations.

Like a good soldier, he was loyal, never turning on his leader even when his own reputation was sullied with the shenanigans of that administration.

So now that he has said publicly that the party he still claims is leaving many people behind with its narrow views and growing isolationism, Buchanan comes along to condemn him.

Buchanan said Powell's endorsement "smacks of ingratitude" for all the things the Republican Party had done for him, "passing over" others to promote him to office after office.

Was Buchanan saying Powell was not qualified to hold those positions?

I thought this was the same Powell whom the Republican Party was flirting with as a potential vice presidential nominee or even presidential nominee. How did he get to be so toxic?

Powell never turned on his friend Sen. John McCain. In fact, he said it pained him to endorse Obama at the expense of disappointing McCain.

It was the party and the campaign that had gone astray. It appears Buchanan proved him right.

Powell — like so many other Republicans recently, including Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley — said McCain's campaign has taken an extreme right turn and is lost.

Buckley, in a blog posting that would later lead to his resignation from National Review, the magazine his father helped establish, wrote, "This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once first-class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget 'by the end of my first term.'

"Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?"

That's also what Powell said.

So why did Buchanan, and Rush Limbaugh, call Powell's endorsement race-related?

The Chicago Tribune last week endorsed Obama, who respresents Illinois in the Senate. He's the first Democrat the paper has backed in its 161-year history.

"We have known Obama since he entered politics a dozen years ago. We have watched him, worked with him, argued with him as he rose from an effective state senator to an inspiring U.S. senator to the Democratic Party's nominee for president," the Tribune's editorial said. "We have tremendous confidence in his intellectual rigor, his moral compass and his ability to make sound, thoughtful, careful decisions. He is ready."

Did that newspaper say all that because Obama is black?

In its first endorsement in a presidential election since 1972, the Los Angeles Times backed Obama. He is the first Democrat the paper has endorsed.

"Our nation has never before had a candidate like Obama, a man born in the 1960s, of black African and white heritage, raised and educated abroad as well as in the United States, and bringing with him a personal narrative that encompasses much of the American story but that, until now, has been reflected in little of its elected leadership," the editorial said. "The excitement of Obama's early campaign was amplified by that newness. But as the presidential race draws to its conclusion, it is Obama's character and temperament that come to the fore. It is his steadiness. His maturity."

Is that paper black, too?

What about conservative Philadelphia radio talk-show host Michael Smerconish, who endorsed Obama on Friday?

"John McCain is an honorable man who has served his country well," Smerconish said. "But he will not get my vote. For the first time since registering as a Republican 28 years ago, I'm voting for a Democrat for president.

"I may have been an appointee in the George H.W. Bush administration, and master of ceremonies for George W. Bush in 2004, but last Saturday I stood amidst the crowd at an Obama event in North Philadelphia."

Smerconish is white.

To lash out at a man respected the world over because he didn't toe the line is just wrong. To reduce his thoughtful words to racism is worse.

Reach Merlene Davis at (859) 231-3218 or 1-800-950-6397, Ext. 3218, or mdavis1@herald-leader.com.



Editor's comment: As long as Republicans got Colin Powell to speak well of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, AND CARRY THIER WATER, INCLUDING BEING USED TO LIE TO THE WORLD ABOUT NON EXISTENT IRAQ WMDs, HE WAS "OUR MAN".

BUT AS SOON AS HE DEMANDED HIS FREEDOM OF CHOICE IN THIS PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION TO SUPPORT SOMEONE, OTHER THAN WHO THE HYPOCRITES WOULD WANT HIM TO SUPPORT, HE BECAME DAMAGED GOODS AND IS NOW "THE BOOGIE MAN".

I GUESS THIS SHOULD SERVE AS A WARNING AND A SAD LESSON TO MANY PEOPLE.

THE BIBLE TELLS US THAT HE WHO HAS EYES, LET HIM SEE, AND HE WHO HAS EARS, LET HIM HEAR!