Posted by
Bored With Hollywood on Saturday, December 13, 2008 7:43:52 AM
I've always admired Colin Powell. His calm demeanor and steady resolve personifies strength and conviction. His service to the country has been outstanding and Americans should be grateful for his leadership. Recently I saw an excerpt of Fareed Zacharia's interview with Powell and he asked him where the Republican Party went wrong. Powell chided the party for drifting too far to the right, not paying enough attention to the issues of minorities, screaming too much, and placing too much emphasis on "small town values," while assuming that citizens in big cities didn't have values. He blamed Sarah Palin for a lot of this. Apparently these were the reasons that Powell endorsed Barack Obama.
I'm not buying it for one second. First of all, John McCain was the Republican nominee. I don't know of anyone who thinks McCain is too far right. No one in Congress has done more to reach across the aisle than McCain. Furthermore, many conservatives felt that McCain was too centrist, yet Republicans nominated him as their choice to represent the party. McCain did everything he could to reach out to minorities and to citizens of all geographic locations. But there was no stopping Barack Obama's machine. The massive amounts of money he raised allowed him to buy unprecedented advertising in swing states, the media's bias prevented them from vetting Obama the way they would any conservative candidate, and the economic meltdown right before the election doomed McCain's chances. Prior to the economic crash, McCain was ahead in the polls in spite of Obama's machine.
What Colin Powell fails to understand about us conservatives is that when you have the media so against us, we get vigilant in our principles. We do want to scream, and we get mad as hell, because it is so unfair and un-American to have a biased press. Barack Obama's record in Illinois was far more left wing than John McCain's record was right wing. McCain refused to attack Obama for his past associations with Reverend Wright, even though many of us thought it was a legitimate issue. Obama promised a $1000 check for 95% of Americans and that's all a lot of voters heard. It's ridiculous. It's like a middle school election: Vote for me and I'll extend lunch hour by an hour. So when Colin Powell says he supported Obama because the Republican Party drifted too far to the right, and didn't address the needs of all of the people, I just think he's being disingenuous. I can't read his mind, but his public comments regarding the party have been an insult to most Republicans who are not prejudiced, who do care about the middle class, and want to see all of our citizens succeed. We just don't agree with the Democratic Party's principles. Apparently, Colin Powell does.