I can only post antecdotal backup of this...but from what I see and the people I speak to....I think history will remember Obama Republicans the way they remember Reagan Democrats. I think it's significant. People I would never expect to be voting democrat at all.
And the thread derailment attempts are back.... Sam, I don't think the problem is that McCain isn't seen as moderate (although he's probably slipping on that front as well), I think he's just a weak candidate.
Actually, most republicans say it's his foreign policy stances that draw their support. Specifically that unlike McCain, Obama takes a more pragmatic and solutions oriented view and isn't hardline. They feel he has a real potential to advance peace in the mideast (Israel/Palestine) unlike McCain who I think we can all see isn't exactly a visionary diplomat. McCain is too much of a military guy - and a lot of Republicans feel that's not what we need right now in our foriegn policy. Even McCain's advisor on foreign policy - Kagan has compared some of Obama's speeches on foreign policy to that of John F Kennedy.
Why do you guys let TJ antagonize you so much. I have to give him props, he does a lot better job of it than I did.
so you were the newyorker guy? i thought maybe you were a different newyorker, you are totally different.
no, i'm the same really. just being honest now with my views and being respectful and trying to give this d&d thing a serious chance. that and if i ever post like newyorker again, clutch will ban me for life.
No, when that ad airs, it's game over. Obama will win every state but Utah once the Faith Hill video is released.
I've mentioned several antecdotal experiences I've had myself with Reagan Democrats (or Reagan Republicans, if you will, since that's what they became after being "seduced" by Ronnie! ), who are coming back to the Democratic Party after decades of wandering in the GOP wilderness. Part of it is Barack Obama, but I think a driving reason is an overwhelming urge to punish the Republican Party, both Bush and the GOP Congress, for their record over the last 8 years. A feeling of "fool me once, shame on you... fool me more times than I can count, shame on me," is in the air. It will be vital for the Democratic Party, after winning in November, to show those folks that they made the right decision in coming back home. Considering the incredible mess being left for them to clean up, that will not be an easy task. Democrats are going to have a great opportunity to forge a new governing coalition for the next couple of decades, but the obstacles placed in the path of success are immense. It will be a real challenge. Impeach Bush/Cheney.
If the Pelosi/Reid-led Congress is indicative of what the Dems have in store for us, then I pray for the future of this country.
I'm not a "believer," myself, but you should have been busy praying during the last 8 years, while Bush and the Republican Party were cutting this country off at the knees. Impeach Bush/Cheney.
wow yes things like raising minimum wage, alternative energy tax credits - WHEN WILL THE MADNESS END!!!!!
Obamacans? N'existe pas. [rquoter] Chasing the Mythical 'Obamacan' Masses Tuesday, August 12, 2008 11:43 AM By Andrew Romano Barack Obama is no Chris Rock, but there's one story he likes to tell on the trail that always makes me laugh. According to the Democratic nominee, there's a particular breed of Obamaniacs who approach him after events to confess their Obamania--sotto voce. “They whisper to me," he says. "They say, ‘Barack, I’m a Republican, but I support you.’ And I say, ‘Thank you.'" Pause. Blink. Blink again. And then: "'Why are we whispering?’” It's all in the delivery. I bring this up today because they're no longer whispering. As we speak/type/read, the Obama camp is holding a conference call with reporters to unveil "Republicans for Obama," a branch of its operation designed to show that "Republicans are coming together in support of Senator Obama to bring change to Washington." That claim was verifiable during the early Democratic primaries, when Republicans willing to crossover and vote in the Democratic contests typically backed Obama over Hillary Clinton by overwhelming margins. Which is why Obama began telling his Obamacan tale in the first place. But now that he's vying for Republican support against a real, live Republican--a slightly different dynamic--I started to wonder whether the story would still hold up to scrutiny.* Obama may count prominent GOPers like Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, presidential granddaughter Susan Eisenhower, Fairbanks, Alaska Mayor Jim Whitaker, former Iowa Rep. Jim Leach, former Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chaffee and former White House intelligence adviser Rita E. Hauser--all of them namechecked on today's call--among his announced (or likely) endorsers. But are there enough rank-and-file Republicans whispering their support at Obama rallies to actually make a difference on Election Day? As I discovered from examination the last 18 months of head-to-head general election polls, the answer seems to be "no." In fact, John McCain's share of the Democratic vote has typically--and surprisingly--been larger than Obama's share of the Republican vote. In other words, it's not that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scared the Obamacan masses off, as some pundits have theorized--it's that they never existed (in any unprecedented way) to begin with. In December 2006--before the unfamiliar Illinois senator had officially announced his candidacy--McCain attracted 25 support among Dems versus Obama's eight percent among Repubs, according to a FOX News poll**. Those numbers tightened over the next few months of polling by various firms, but Obama never established a sustained lead. A February 2007 Quinnipiac survey showed McCain with 17 percent crossover support, for example, versus nine percent for Obama; in a June 2007 sounding by the same outlet, McCain still led 15 percent to 11. During primary season--between December 2007 and April 2008--McCain's Democratic number typically hovered between 18 and 22. Obama, meanwhile, never climbed higher than 13 percent. Much of this gap can be attributed to the primary clash with Clinton, whose supporters often said they preferred McCain to Obama in head-to-head polls taken before the final Democratic contests on June 3. But even though McCain's support among Dems declined after Hillary bowed out--a natural result of Democratic unity--Obama's Republican backing didn't budge. Today, Republicans for Obama and Democrats for McCain effectively cancel each other out. The latest numbers from CBS News show Obama at 11 percent crossover support and McCain at 10 (and tied among Independents); FOX News puts the pair at six percent and seven percent, respectively--a result that closely matches where George W. Bush (nine percent crossover) and John Kerry (seven percent crossover) stood at this point in 2004. That also deadlock mirrors 2000, when George W. Bush won over 11 percent of Democratic voters and Al Gore poached eight percent of Republicans--and it means that neither Obama nor McCain, both of whom have repeatedly boasted of their "strong record of bringing people together from the left and the right to solve problems," can currently rely crossover voters to carry them to victory. I'm not saying Obamacans don't exist. They do. It's just that there's little statistical evidence to support the claim that the number of Republicans who favor this year's Democrat is substantially larger than the number of Republicans who favored his predecessors. Things could always change, of course. Perhaps over the next 84 days the newly-formed "Republicans for Obama" will add a game-changing number of actual Republican voters to its current roster of Republican politicians. But I'm inclined for now to see it mostly as a publicity effort. With Obama vacationing in Hawaii this week, the major challenge facing Chicago is finding a way to control the news cycle without its candidate's help. "Republicans for Obama" was today's solution--a convenient way to repackage a handful of well-timed GOP endorsements and reinforce the senator's "post-partisan" brand in the process. Whether or not it reflects reality, or has any electoral impact, is probably irrelevant--as long as it transforms a few whispers into a day's worth of headlines.[/rquoter]
Quoted for truth. This is an older article but interesting nonetheless: Why Republicans Like Obama By Peter Wehner Sunday, February 3, 2008; B07 Barack Obama is not only popular among Democrats, he's also an appealing figure to many Republicans. Former GOP House member Joe Scarborough, now a host on MSNBC, reports that after every important Obama speech, he is inundated with e-mails praising the speech -- with most of them coming from Republicans. William Bennett, an influential conservative intellectual, has said favorable things about Obama. So have Rich Lowry of National Review and Peggy Noonan. And so have I. A number of prominent Republicans I know, who would wage a pitched battle against Hillary Clinton, like Obama and would find it hard to generate much enthusiasm in opposing him. What is at the core of Obama's appeal? Part of it is the eloquence and uplift of his speeches, combined with his personal grace and dignity. By all accounts, Obama is a well-grounded, decent, thoughtful man. He comes across, in his person and manner, as nonpartisan. He has an unsurpassed ability to (seemingly) transcend politics. Even when he disagrees with people, he doesn't seem disagreeable. "You know what charm is," Albert Camus wrote in "The Fall," "a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question." Obama has such charm, and its appeal is not restricted to Democrats. A second reason Republicans appreciate Obama is that he is pitted against a couple, the Clintons, whom many Republicans hold in contempt. Among the effects of the Obama-Clinton race is that it is forcing Democrats to come to grips with the mendacity and ruthlessness of the Clinton machine. Conservatives have long believed that the Clintons are an unprincipled pair who will destroy those who stand between them and power -- whether they are political opponents, women from Bill Clinton's past or independent counsels. When the Clintons were doing this in the 1990s, it was viewed by many Democrats as perfectly acceptable. Some even applauded them for their brass-knuckle tactics. But now that the Clintons are roughing up an inspiring young man who appears to represent the hope and future of the Democratic Party, the liberal establishment is reacting with outrage. "I think we've reached an irrevocable turning point in liberal opinion of the Clintons," writes Jonathan Chait of the New Republic. Many conservatives respond: It's about time. A third reason for Obama's GOP appeal is that unlike Clinton and especially John Edwards, Obama has a message that, at its core, is about unity and hope rather than division and resentment. He stresses that "out of many we are one." And to his credit, Barack Obama is running a color-blind campaign. "I did not travel around this state over the last year and see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina," Obama said in his victory speech last weekend. "I saw South Carolina." That evening, his crowd of supporters chanted as one, "Race doesn't matter." This was an electric moment. Obama's words are in the great tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. Obama, more than any figure in America, can help bind up the racial wounds of America. In addition, for the past eight years, one of the most prominent qualities of the American left has been anger, which has served it and the country very poorly. An Obama primary win would be a move away from the politics of rage. The one thing that will keep Obama's appeal from translating into widespread support among Republicans is that he is, on almost every issue, a conventional liberal. And while rhetoric and character matter a lot, politics is finally and fundamentally about ideas and philosophy. Whether we're talking about the Iraq war, monitoring terrorist communications, health care, taxes, education, abortion and the courts, the size of government, or almost anything else, Obama embodies the views of the special-interest groups on the left. In this respect, he should borrow from the Clinton strategy in 1992, when Bill Clinton ran as a "New Democrat," championed free trade, promised to "end welfare as we know it" and criticized, on hawkish grounds, the "butchers of Beijing." Bill Clinton ran an intellectually creative race whose ideas appealed to non-Democrats. Barack Obama has shown no such inclination so far (his speeches, while inspiring, mostly avoid a serious discussion of policies). If he wanted to demonstrate his independence from liberal orthodoxy, for example, he could come out in favor of school choice for low-income families, which would both help poor families and demonstrate support for some of the best faith-based institutions in America: urban parochial schools. If Obama becomes the Democratic nominee and fails to take steps such as this, his liberal views will be his greatest vulnerability. Obama will try to reject the liberal label -- but based on his stands on the issues, at least so far, the label will fit, and it will stick. Barack Obama is among the most impressive political talents of our lifetime. If he defeats Hillary Clinton, the question for the general election is not whether he can transcend his race but whether he can reach beyond his ideology. The writer, formerly deputy assistant to President Bush, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/01/AR2008020102663_pf.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-exurbs12-2008aug12,0,818867,full.story From the Los Angeles Times UNEASY VOTERS: The changing exurbs Longtime Republican voters are airing new views Many struggling families in the normally comfortable cul-de-sacs outside U.S. cities are thinking of switching parties. By Peter Wallsten Los Angeles Times Staff Writer August 12, 2008 WESLEY CHAPEL, FLA. — The first in an occasional series. -- Cheap mortgages and cheap gas built this sprawling landscape of tan and gray stucco homes, iron gates and golf course communities. And the people who flocked here over the last decade -- upwardly mobile young families in pursuit of lower taxes and wholesome neighborhoods -- emerged as a Republican voting bloc crucial to President Bush's 2004 reelection. But listen to Anna Rodriguez and her neighbors who gather nightly on lawn chairs to unwind, and a change comes into focus that could shift the national political landscape in 2008 and beyond. The boom that turned swamps and pastures into a suburban mecca has stopped dead. Now the talk is about plummeting home values, rising food costs, and gas prices that make the once-painless half-hour commute to Tampa a financial strain. It's enough to give some here the sense that maybe, this time around, the Republicans do not deserve their votes. "This is the first election I ever actually looked at someone else other than the Republican candidate," said Rodriguez, 33, who is studying to be a teacher and is a fixture at the lawn chair hobnob here on Greely Court, a quiet cul-de-sac in a Pasco County subdivision called Wrencrest. "I've had enough with the Republican economics," she added, as her husband, Danny, who had just driven from his banking job in Tampa, piped in: "No more Bush." The Rodriguezes were sitting in a neighbor's driveway with several other regulars as the kids played in the street. From their chairs, the parents could see evidence of changing times: home-for-sale signs in both directions, with overgrown lawns marking the foreclosures. Dori Merkle, 50, who works as a special education instructor in the local schools, said her collapsing home value was pushing her to consider voting Democratic for the first time in her life. Another neighbor, Cheryl Bernales, a 29-year-old economics teacher who voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, said that she could face a pay cut "because the economy's so bad," and that she believes Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama "isn't so entrenched in the system." In this massive housing complex on the fringes of the Tampa Bay area, one of dozens in Pasco County that popped up over the last 10 years, the sour economy appears to be turning many GOP-friendly voters into undecideds or even potential switchers. These voters represent a jump ball -- a potentially decisive constituency in several states that could be snared by either candidate. But for Republican candidate John McCain, the danger signs are found beyond Greely Court. Pasco County is only one of the politically potent communities known as exurbs, the outer suburbs of cities, that could provide the margin of victory for the GOP -- or not. Four years ago, exurbs in Florida, Ohio, Nevada and Colorado were especially important to Bush's reelection. Targeted by Karl Rove, the architect of Bush's victory, they were full of families escaping crowded schools and other downsides of city and suburban life. They were more consumed with the demands of everyday life than politics, but were open to the Republican messages of family values and low taxes. To Rove, these communities were an important piece of his plan to build a lasting GOP majority. And Bush made a strong stand, winning 97 of the 100 fastest-growing counties. McCain, a senator from Arizona, is trying to do the same in a far different climate as exurbanites feel increasingly pinched by the rising costs of what not long ago seemed the ideal lifestyle. In interviews across Pasco County, many voters said they liked McCain's support for expanded offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico -- a concrete sign that he has a plan to deal with their most pressing concerns. Public surveys and GOP polls show broad support for drilling, even in this coastal county. That helps explain why McCain made it a centerpiece of his campaign, and why Obama used a Florida appearance to drop his staunch opposition. Pivotal places But many also worry that McCain, known for his war credentials, does not relate to the troubles facing communities so vulnerable to fluctuations in gas prices and housing values -- communities that happen to be in some of the election's most pivotal states. The pain is especially acute in hotly contested Nevada and Florida, which are home to many such communities and are among the nation's hardest-hit real estate markets. In eastern Pasco County, where much of the recent growth had occurred, the median price of a single-family home has dropped by nearly one-quarter over the last two years. Since Bush was reelected in 2004, according to a Times analysis, the average cost of gas to drive both ways of the 26-mile commute between the Wrencrest subdivision and downtown Tampa in a typical passenger car has more than doubled, from $4.36 to $9.22. Similar trends can be seen in the exurban counties around Denver, Las Vegas, Cincinnati and Detroit, and in the Virginia exurbs near Washington, D.C. Stephen S. Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University, says that many young families that moved to exurbia since 2000 racked up credit card debt and took on big mortgages. Now, he said, "if they're upside down on their mortgage, they'll be looking for someone to blame." Democrats concede that Obama is unlikely to win a majority of voters in these traditionally conservative communities. But there are signs that 2008 offers a chance for Democrats to slice into the large margins that helped Bush win in 2004. Already, Democrats have shown improvement at the ballot box. A study to be published soon by Brookings, a centrist think tank, found that Democrats increased their vote share in the exurban counties from 40% in the 2004 presidential race to 44% in the 2006 congressional elections, just after housing prices began to fall and gas prices began to climb. Party strategists are studying the 2006 Senate races in three presidential battlegrounds -- Virginia, Missouri and Colorado -- to learn how themes focused on quality-of-life issues, such as traffic and infrastructure, helped Democrats improve and even win some exurban counties. "They ran as pragmatists, offering to solve the problems of exurbanites," said Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. "If Obama runs a similar race or has similar appeal in those exurbs, that's the road to the White House." Republicans also appear to be losing ground in voter registration. The GOP still leads among the 283,000 registered voters in Pasco County, but local elections officials report that Democrats are gaining -- adding about 5,800 new voters and party-switchers since January, compared with about 4,200 new Republicans. Obama's top strategists have identified issues that they believe will sway a voting bloc that often includes parents of young children: job security, public schools and the cost of college, said deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand. The Illinois senator's recent revision of his long-held opposition to expanded oil drilling was also aimed at this group, as was his promise of an energy rebate. But interviews with dozens of voters in Pasco County revealed that Obama, who has mostly relied on the lofty theme of transforming politics rather than fix-it solutions, has yet to win their trust. And analysts say moving them from swing voters to Democratic voters is a tall order for a liberal politician attempting to become the first black president. "History tells us that it takes quite a bit of economic pain to cause traditionally conservative voters to shift candidates," said John D. Kasarda, a professor at the University of North Carolina's business school who has studied demographic patterns in suburbs. GOP strategies Republican strategists are laying plans to convince anxious exurban voters that McCain would be far better for their car-centric lifestyles. Also, the campaign has deployed phone banks to survey exurban voters on issues that could lead to targeted appeals. "We would make a mistake if we would say these are just Republican base areas so let's just turn out the vote," said Mike DuHaime, a McCain strategist who advised the GOP four years ago on its exurban targeting. "If anything, these are swing areas where if we run the wrong kind of campaign we could lose those counties." Tom Grossman, the Republican chairman in Warren County, Ohio, near Cincinnati, said commuters in his area would be hearing frequently about Obama's resistance to drilling. The argument has already worked for some, including a few mothers who sat poolside at the recreation center in a central Pasco County subdivision called Lexington Oaks. As their children splashed, the mothers talked about paying thousands to gas up their SUVs, canceling summer vacations, even considering going back to work. Nevertheless, all agreed: McCain was the candidate who might lower gas prices. But, in a worrisome sign for McCain, even one of Pasco's most prominent Republicans says he's not sure where his loyalties will take him in November. Alex Deeb, who owns several construction companies, said he "couldn't build houses fast enough" in Bush's first term. But now, one of his firms just laid off 10 workers. Deeb thinks McCain "doesn't get it on the economy" and wishes he could vote for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). "At least she understands the economy," said Deeb, who says he's a "dyed-in-the-wool Republican." When pressed, Deeb said he'd probably wind up voting for McCain. But the presumptive GOP nominee shouldn't bother asking for a campaign donation. Deeb said he wouldn't send him a check. peter.wallsten@latimes.com Times staff writer Vimal Patel contributed to this report.
