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PARSING POWELL.
It's been interesting to watch the Right attack Colin Powell for endorsing Barack Obama; it reveals in what low esteem they actually held Powell even as the Republican Party used him as a shield against accusations of extremism. Last night on Hardball, Pat Buchanan expressed confusion at the idea that Powell would be opposed to a Republican agenda, given that Powell is a Republican. Rush Limbaugh emerged on a Sunday to basically accuse Powell of being racist:
"Secretary Powell says his endorsement is not about race," Limbaugh wrote in an email. "OK, fine. I am now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates he has endorsed. I'll let you know what I come up with."Limbaugh has a point, but it isn't the one he thinks he's made. The question isn't why is Powell endorsing Obama, but rather why hasn't Powell endorsed any liberals before? As Pat Buchanan put it in 1995, when Powell was reportedly considering making a run for the Republican nomination:
"If Colin Powell got into the race and became the nominee and tried to make us a pro-abortion, pro-gun control, pro-affirmative action party which celebrated New Deal and Great Society programs, then there will be an explosion in San Diego and I would fight him with everything I had to keep our party a conservative and principled party. I think I would win that battle at the convention."
So in 1995 Buchanan was threatening "explosions" at the Republican Convention if Powell ran, based on his liberal policy positions, but in 2008 he doesn't see why Powell would be opposed to more conservative justices on the court. The answer, that Powell is pro-choice, would seem to be an obvious one.
This really just begs the question of why Powell is a Republican to begin with. On Hardball, Buchanan suggested that Powell was "ungrateful" for what the party had done for him. The racial undertone, that Powell deserves his rise not to his own talent but to the generosity of the whites around him, is par for the course with Buchanan. But whatever the Republican Party did for Powell, he repaid by hiding their extremism and their outright and growing hostility to people of color. He put a moderate, black face that hid the nativist, warmongering, dittohead base of the party. I think people like Buchanan and Limbaugh resent him as much for having needed him as they do for his defection to Obama.
I suspect that Powell's loyalty to the Republican party was based at
least partially on the fact that he came into his own under Reagan and Bush.
It also may have had to do with his feeling that Democrats take black
votes for granted, but I don't know. It certainly has nothing to do
with how Powell feels about social issues.
In the context of Powell's policy positions, his decision to back Obama isn't an embrace of an irrational, tribal loyalty so much as it is the abandonment of one.
--A. Serwer
COMMENTS (10)
Posted by: Mike | October 20, 2008 12:22 PM
Adam,
I recall reading an article years ago, right when Powell was appointed to the Joint Chiefs, about him being pulled over by some cops in the south during the 1964 election campaign and part of the story was that he either had an LBJ bumpersticker or LBJ campaign materials on his front seat, so he hardly was a life long Republican, and with his views on some social issues that are at odds with the Republican base its pretty easy to think he would be willing to cross lines to endorce a Democrat, whether white or black.
Posted by: Napoleon | October 20, 2008 12:36 PM
This really just begs the question of why Powell is a Republican to begin with.
It also begs the question why does a partisan hack like Pat Buchanan have a job on a major news channel not named Fox News.
Posted by: Ron E. | October 20, 2008 1:19 PM
Powell tends to be a front-runner. When he had to choose a party in 1995, the Village hated Dems.
Posted by: bob somerby | October 20, 2008 1:23 PM
Powell tends to be a front-runner. When he had to choose a party in 1995, the Village hated Dems.
Posted by: bob somerby | October 20, 2008 1:24 PM
NEOCON morons like Limbaugh who are saying Powell endorses Obama because he's "black" are the worst kind of racist hypocrites imaginable.
Firstly, if voting for someone who happens to be (approx) the same color makes someone "racist", then as a white man I have *no choice* but to vote for Obama!
Secondly, it is xenophobic, hate addled jackasses like you that drove Powell away! Not to mention Buckley (do you even know who he is?), Frum, etc
The pigpen that loud mouthed morons like Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly etc have created is *not* the party of Abe Lincoln, which is why anyone with more than one brain cell is leaving them. They hijacked the Republican Party and now they are losing the election for their candidate.
Keep up the good work, pillow case heads!
Posted by: John Longjohn | October 20, 2008 3:23 PM
What Rush and Buchanan have failed to see is that as the GOP was taken over by neo-cons, theocrats, and corporate pirates, they drove away many long time Republicans - why do you think the numbers of people signing up as Independents has increased so much?
Posted by: CParis | October 20, 2008 3:49 PM
Why is Powell R? I dunno, but I'm as free to speculate as anybody else.
Before Clinton, the Democrats were the champions of a particular kind of victimology that could drive any member of the victim class who didn't feel like a victim insane. Clinton cured the Democrats of that, but it took awhile. Powell was always for Army-style affirmative action, but I doubt was a fan of--say--the Ebonics movement. Maybe that's what turned Powell into a Republican. I know it's done that to other black men.
Of course, the Republicans have since succeeded to paranoid victimology.
Posted by: Joe S. | October 20, 2008 5:28 PM
I think Powell's life as a military officer explains his Republicanism. The enlisted corps is more diverse, but the officer corps is overwhelmingly Republican. It's almost unheard of for a high-ranking officer to be a Democrat, and I suspect being one might be an impediment to advancement, creating a "you're not one of us" meme.
Posted by: beckya57 | October 20, 2008 6:52 PM
Also remember that Powell sided with his fellow generals against Clinton over the gays-in-the-military issue. He's no social reformer.
Posted by: beckya57 | October 20, 2008 6:54 PM