Former Bush Loyalists Endorsing Obama?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Energy, Money, The War On Terrorism
Apparently they feel his campaign is the one most likely to unify the country.
Tom Bernstein went to Yale University with Bush and co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team with him. In 2004 he donated the maximum $2,000 to the president’s reelection campaign and gave $50,000 to the Republican National Committee. This year he is switching his support to Obama. He is one of many former Bush admirers who find the Democrat newcomer appealing.Matthew Dowd, Bush’s chief campaign strategist in 2004, announced last month that he was disillusioned with the war in Iraq and the president’s “my way or the highway� style of leadership – the first member of Bush’s inner circle to denounce the leader’s performance in office.
Although Dowd has yet to endorse a candidate, he said the only one he liked was Obama. “I think we should design campaigns that appeal, not to 51% of the people, but bring the country together as a whole,� Dowd said.
Those are a couple of heavy hitters, and I know Dowd didn’t say Obama was his guy, but that was certainly ringing endorsement for Obama’s centrist message. Whether or not Obama will be able to stick to that as he weaves his way through the primaries is anybody’s guess.
Meanwhile, Obama may have come up with a very interesting plan…
Obama proposed that the government pay for 10 percent of domestic automakers’ health-care costs for retired workers through 2017 if the firms plow half the savings into equipment for making more efficient cars and trucks. Obama’s campaign estimates that this would cost taxpayers roughly $7 billion over the next 10 years.
Am I excited about the government subsidy? Not at first. But on second glance, you can look at this investment as a step to winning the global WoT. Because after all, oil funds terrorism and the sooner we can wean ourselves off that foreign teet, the better.
Seriously, what’s $7 billion over 10 years? We spent more than 10 times that in the first war funding bill, and we’ve spent nearly 40 times that number to date on the war in less than 4 years! Why not bet a little on what is most likely a sure thing? Of course they’d be able to make cars more fuel efficient. They already are and more investment means more innovation. And it doesn’t have to be a lot of innovations to change the world.
Consider me impressed by the logic here. Because whether we like or not, one of the most casual fronts of the WoT can be found nearly every time we visit the gas station, so I look at this plan as representing a new type of defense spending.
But Obama says it best himself…
“The need to drastically change our energy policy is no longer a debatable proposition. It is not a question of whether, but how; not a question of if, but when. For the sake of our security, our economy, our jobs and our planet, the age of oil must end in our time.”
Indeed.
This entry was posted on Monday, May 7th, 2007 and is filed under 2008 Election, Energy, Money, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 9th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
I liked this plan. But, it’s unfortunate that some of the more radical in the democratic party will look at the endorsements as a reason to distrust him.
They don’t understand that in order to win, you need more than just democrats voting for you.
They also fail to see that this country needs to come together to fix the problems facing this country. It can no longer practice the politics of the 90s and this decade of uber partisanship. We have massive problems facing us and it will only be addressed by the joining of forces.