Republicans Signing Up for Barack Obama

It's not unusual for business people of any political affiliation to contribute to one party one year and the other the next and to sometimes donate to both parties if a clear winner isn't evident. One could argue that it's a form of covering your bets. But it's curious that some Republicans are choosing Barack Obama early on. Truthout caught this story by Sarah Baxter of The Sunday Times:

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.

(snip)

...last week a surprising new name joined the chorus of praise for the antiwar Obama - 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 favoured 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.

(snip)

Disagreements on the war have not stopped John Martin, a Navy reservist and founder of the website Republicans for Obama, from supporting the antiwar senator. He joined the military after the Iraq war and is about to be deployed to Afghanistan.

"I disagree with Obama on the war but I don't think it is a test of his patriotism," Martin says. "Obama has a message of hope for the country."

(snip)

Not to be outdone, Hillary Clinton has many Republican defectors of her own, including John Mack, chief executive of Morgan Stanley, who helped raise $200,000 for the president's reelection, qualifying him as a "Bush ranger". He said last week that he was impressed by Clinton's expertise. "I know we're associated mainly with the Republicans but we've always gone for the individual," Mack said.

No doubt the motivations of Republicans and conservative independents supporting Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or other Democrats can vary. Some may genuinely want to see a serious change. Some may be responding to Barack Obama's optimism and unity rhetoric. Some may want a Democrat who's Republican-lite. Some may be cynically supporting the candidate mostly likely to lose in the 2008 general election. Others may be just covering their bets. But it's worth watching in one of the oddest eras in American politics.