Free Republic

In 2008, several Republicans endorsed Democratic then-Sen. Barack Obama over the Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain. But heading into 2012, many of the “Obamacons,” as The Economist dubbed them four years ago, have become disenchanted with the president, actively unwilling to vote for him or uncommited.

(Reuters) - In contrast to 2008, Democratic President Barack Obama cannot count on a wave of support for his re-election bid next year from well-known moderate Republicans. Unhappy with Obama's handling of the economy, conservative backers from three years ago are either sitting on the fence or have thrown their lot in with Republican presidential hopefuls like Mitt Romney. Known as "Obamacons," moderate Republicans helped make the Democrat's case in 2008 that he was a new breed of "post-partisan" politician who would work with both parties. Obama's youth and the narrative of electing the first black president also attracted Republicans...

They are starting to eat their own. Polls show that Democrat Barack Obama is leading in battleground states, including some -- such as Ohio -- carried by George W. Bush not once but twice. But even before the election is over -- and despite the fact that some polls show a tightening race -- Republicans are piling on their own presidential candidate, John McCain, accusing him of deserting principle. Some moderate Republicans think McCain has sold his soul to the right, abandoning the bipartisan record he built on immigration and other issues. "He has lost his brand as a maverick,"...

It may be something of a surprise that, as a long time conservative, I now support Barack Obama. In 1968, I was a speechwriter first for Ronald Reagan, when Governor of California, then, as Richard Nixon became the presidential nominee, a speechwriter for Nixon, working at his home office at 450 Park Avenue. I became a senior editor at National Review in 1969, a position I held until recently. Republican President George W. Bush has not been a conservative at all, either in domestic policy or in foreign policy. He invaded Iraq on the basis of abstract theory, the very...

Here's a recap of Republicans, Republicans-turned-independents and conservatives who supported who supported Obama for President in 2008. They supported an Undeniable Disaster & a Historic Failure. Shame on them. --------- Elected Officials: Jim Leach, Former Congressman from Iowa "For me, the national interest comes before party concerns, particularly internationally. We do need a new direction in American policy, and Obama has a sense of that."Lincoln Chafee, Former United States Senator from Rhode Island "As I look at the candidates in order who to vote for, certainly my kind of conservatism was reflected with Senator Obama, and those points are that...

(CNN) — John McCain’s general election campaign began as “the strategic equivalent of throwing a football through a tire at 50 yards” – and was doomed weeks before Election Day, his former chief strategist said Thursday. “We were running a campaign under extra difficult circumstances — the state of the Republican Party, the president’s unpopularity, the economy — a lot of issues that were not John McCain’s fault, but were John McCain’s problem in this race,” Schmidt told an audience at the University of Delaware, according to Politico. “When Lehman Brothers collapsed in the fall I knew pretty much right...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) said Wednesday that Republicans shouldn’t oppose President Obama as a reflex and should praise him when he succeeds. Speaking at the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s (NRSC) spring dinner, Romney was thick on criticism of Obama, but also said Republicans shouldn’t root against the man Romney might well face in the 2012 presidential election. After offering a few choice words for Obama’s early conduct in office, Romney suggested it’s OK to hope things go well under the new president. “I also think its important for us to nod to the president when he’s right,” Romney...

"I do know libertarians who think Obama is the Antichrist, that he's farther left than John Kerry, much farther left than Bill Clinton, and you'd clearly have to be insane to vote for this guy," said David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "But there are libertarians who say, 'Oh yeah? Do you think Obama will increase spending by $1 trillion, because that's what Republicans did over the past two presidential terms. So really, how much worse can he be?' And there are certainly libertarians who think Obama will be better on the war...

Mr Powell is now a four-star general in America’s most surprising new army: the Obamacons. The army includes other big names such as Susan Eisenhower, Dwight’s granddaughter, who introduced Mr Obama at the Democratic National Convention and Christopher Buckley, the son of the conservative icon William Buckley, who complains that he has not left the Republican Party: the Republican Party has left him. Chuck Hagel, a Republican senator from Nebraska and one-time bosom buddy of Mr McCain has also flirted heavily with the movement, though he has refrained from issuing an official endorsement.The biggest brigade in the Obamacon army consists...

After reading all these stories about republicans and "conservatives" who are jumping off the ship, I thought of a new name for them. How about Vichy Republicans? Sounds like these commentators who are dissing Sara Palin, the administration and "mean" republicans are looking for an accomodation with the new Obamaocracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vichy_France

To the degree that they are engaged in this election, conservatives are motivated entirely by fear of Obama and what he will do as president when backed by a solidly liberal Democratic House and Senate. They are not driven by love of the Republican candidate, and it shows in the anger present at McCain campaign rallies. Most conservatives will probably vote for McCain, but they also realize they are far less likely to persuade others, and they feel a disaster coming. The enthusiasm the Right felt during the 2004 election, which had been framed as a true ideological clash between...

My party has slipped its moorings. It’s time for a true pragmatist to lead the country. THE MORE I LISTEN TO AND READ ABOUT “the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate,” the more I like him. Barack Obama strikes a chord with me like no political figure since Ronald Reagan. To explain why, I need to explain why I am a conservative and what it means to me. In 1964, at the age of 16, I organized the Dallas County Youth for Goldwater. My senior thesis at the University of Texas was on the conservative intellectual revival in America....

THE MORE I LISTEN TO AND READ ABOUT “the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate,” the more I like him. Barack Obama strikes a chord with me like no political figure since Ronald Reagan. To explain why, I need to explain why I am a conservative and what it means to me. In 1964, at the age of 16, I organized the Dallas County Youth for Goldwater. My senior thesis at the University of Texas was on the conservative intellectual revival in America. Twenty years later, I was invited by William F. Buckley Jr. to join the board of...

Why this lifelong Republican may vote for Obama The party of Bush and McCain outsourced the hunt for bin Laden, failing to accomplish a vital mission since 9/11. By Michael SmerconishSep. 11, 2008 | Where the hell are Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri? And why does virtually no one ask anymore? What's changed since the days when any suburban soccer mom would have strangled either of them with her bare hands if given the chance? And what happened to President Bush's declaration to a joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11 that "any nation that continues to harbor...

The state headquarters of Barack Obama’s campaign sent out a list Thursday of nearly 50 Virginians, including three from Lynchburg, who it said were Republi-cans supporting the Democratic presidential candidate. The Obama staffers failed to check closely enough with Steve Bozeman, whose name was on the list. Bozeman said he plans to vote for John McCain, Obama’s Republican opponent. “No one got my permission” to list his name among Obama supporters, said Bozeman, a retired Marine and Vietnam veteran who led the Pledge of Allegiance at Obama’s Lynchburg rally Aug. 20. “I was honored to do that,” Bozeman said. “Unfortunately,...

CNN) -- Armstrong Williams is an African-American conservative commentator who is thinking about making a decision that he says is so agonizing it gives him heartburn. This fall, he may vote for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee. The nationally-known radio talk show host is a proud, third-generation Republican who chuckles when African-American friends tell him it's time to "return home" to the Democratic Party. Though he is still hasn't decided for whom he'll cast his ballot, there's something about Obama's presidential candidacy that excites him. "History, brother," Williams said. "It cannot be anything else." "There's very little...

I saw a Republicans for Obama bumper sticker the other day and couldn't help laughing out loud. Republicans for Obama is an oxymoron. Oil and water, fire and ice. Impossible. Then I stumbled across a news article about this craze that featured two "Republicans" who are supporting the O Man. Former GOP Senator Lincoln Chaffee, who put down the bong long enough to vote for John Kerry in 2004, and Jim Leach, former Iowa Congressman who always looks concerned, have jumped on the Obama bandwagon. Neither man is a conservative, and both were voted out of office, so this isn't...

Mr Obama is making a big pitch to Republicans. He has spoken glowingly of Ronald Reagan, is friendly to religious voters and has invested heavily in advertising and staffing not just in the swing states of the Midwest but also in such Republican strongholds as Texas. Yet there are a number of myths about "Obamacans" (as Mr Obama calls them) or "Obamacons" (as pundits do). Their numbers are overestimated and their import is misunderstood. It is neither on foreign policy nor on economics but on religious values that Mr Obama has made his big pitch to party-switchers. There has been...

Wednesday, August 13, 2008 Obama creates the illusion of Republicans for Obama: scrapes barrel with 2 unknown GOP discards & a NY lib with dodgy friends Democrats for McCain including many of the millions who form part of the Just Say No Deal/ PUMA/ and NoBama coalitions are providing a solid block of support for John McCain. Not to be outdone Obama today, with great media fanfare, announced his Republicans for Obama group. This is another desperate attempt to reassure Democrat super-delegates that Obama is commanding broad support across the country, especially from Republicans who Obama argues would never rally...

Andrew Romano takes apart the supposed “Obamacan” movement of Republicans who support Barack Obama for President. As Romano notes in Newsweek, the appearance of Lincoln Chaffee — who is no longer a Republican anyway — and a couple of previously-committed endorsers yesterday doesn’t exactly make a movement. In checking the polls, the actual motion comes from the other direction: 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 is an emphatic “no.” In...

Barack Obama's campaign is rolling out a number of centrist Republicans who are endorsing the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee over Republican rival John McCain - in a show of his ability to win cross-over votes. A conference call Tuesday featured former Iowa Rep. Jim Leach, former White House intelligence adviser Rita Hauser and former Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee, who represented his state as a Republican, but switched to become a Democrat so he could vote for Obama in the primary. Leach predicted that a lot of Republicans and independents are going to be attracted by Obama's campaign. The Obama...

God, Republicans are saps. They think that they’re running against some academic liberal who wouldn’t wear flag pins on his lapel, whose wife isn’t proud of America and who went to some liberationist church where the pastor damned his own country. They think they’re running against some naïve university-town dreamer, the second coming of Adlai Stevenson. But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce...

Senator Obama has announced that he intends to create a Council For Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Having been privileged to give some advance guidance for this worthy idea, it is exciting to watch it become part of the public record. An old idea talked about by George W. Bush and even "his thousand points of light" father? Well, yes, talked about; but by the writing of Bush's own staff, regrettably, not done. Obama says he's different and this will be a "critical part of his administration." The proof will be in the doing, of course, but this much is plain:...

Abortion has been dividing the culture, including political parties for over 30 years now. In its last several iterations with the Clintons, Al Gore, and John Kerry, the Democratic party platform has been rather decidedly one-sided.Roe v. Wade is to be affirmed and defended. End of story. Oh yes, there was the language of "safe, legal and rare," but the emphasis was always on 'safe and legal,' with 'rare' little more than an afterthought. Barack Obama is a different type of candidate. As he sees it, Roe is not an endorsement of abortion, so much as an affirmation that abortion...

I suppose I have to accept the insanity that some glassy-eyed Republicans are considering voting for Barack Obama, but I don't have to like it. Whether or not this is an example of the liberal media trying to create rather than report news, The New York Times is reporting that small enclaves of Republicans are meeting around the country to discuss their support for Obama. Let's call them "support groups." One such support group in Indiana is calling its attendees "whispering Republicans." Fittingly, these renegades, as the Times called them, met over iced tea and brownies, as if to signify...

Chuck Lasker, a political blogger and Internet consultant in Indiana, hosted a gathering last week of 20 people he calls "whispering Republicans" - party members like him who support Senator Barack Obama, a Democrat, for president. Over iced tea and brownies, the renegades took turns explaining why they liked Mr. Obama and recalling the strange stares from other Republicans. In recent weeks, Obama aides have met with Republican leaders in crucial states to strategize about wooing undecided voters. ... Mr. Obama is hardly a perfect candidate for Republicans. ... And the idea of a Barack Obama-Nancy Pelosi-Harry Reid triumvirate, should...

If anyone could lay claim totheir state's Republican Party, it's Deborah Burstion-Donbraye of Cleveland. The 53-year-old international business consultant is the former outreach director for the Ohio Republican Party, for starters. She helped deliver the swing state to President Bush in his 2004 re-election bid in which he garnered 16 percent of the black vote. Among her Republican credentials, Mrs. Burstion-Donbraye worked in several high-level positions during the Reagan and Bush administrations of the late 1980s and was the press secretary for George W. Bush's Texas gubernatorial campaign in 1994. In the 1980s, she was an assistant national desk editor...

Almost anything can happen in an election year, but among conservatives, almost everyone seems to agree that no matter who captures the White House in November, the movement that has ruled the Republican Party since the 1960s and mostly dominated American politics since 1980 has lost its way. Across the spectrum of the right, writers and thinkers have turned their relentless analysis inward, a kind of political EST seminar aimed at self-transformation.

President McCain in 2000 I must be one of the few conservative writers in cyberspace who never feared a McCain presidency. When Senator McCain looked like he might win the Republican nomination in 2000, I asked what, exactly, my friends were so worried about. McCain was honest, like Bush, while Clinton and Gore were steeped in moral slipperiness. McCain was pro-life, like Bush, while Clinton and Gore were pro-abortion. McCain, like Bush, supported a strong military, while Clinton famously “loathed” the military and Gore followed him like a trained poodle. McCain’s ACU (American Conservative Union) voting record is conservative and...

The Democrats and the GOP have not given voters a substantive choice for president in November. Barack Obama trumpets “change.” John McCain trumpets “maverick.” Yet they both stand for the Beltway establishment, the status quo and the further centralization of power in the presidency.

The judiciary is becoming an important election issue. John McCain is warning conservatives that control of today's finely balanced Supreme Court depends on his election. Unfortunately, his jurisprudence is likely to be anything but conservative. The idea of a "living Constitution" long has been popular on the political left. Conservatives routinely dismiss such result-oriented justice, denouncing "judicial activism" and proclaiming their fidelity to "original intent." However, many Republicans, like Mr. McCain, are just as result-oriented as their Democratic opponents. They only disagree over the result desired. Judge-made rights are wrong because there is no constitutional warrant behind them. The Constitution...

Despite worsening economic conditions and a news backdrop that supposedly favors Democrats, presumed Republican standard-bearer John McCain remains only 3 points behind rival Barack Obama in the latest IBD/TIPP Poll. But the poll also shows McCain isn't pulling as well as expected from the independents and moderates to whom his "maverick" reputation was thought to appeal. He also has yet to close the sale with his party's conservative base. Compared with the 78% support that McCain has with Republicans in general, conservatives back him by 67%, with 17% still undecided. Obama polls 13% among conservatives. In sharp contrast, liberals favor...

A number of friends of mine have commented on an odd phenomenon that they have observed-- conservative Republicans they know who are saying that they are going to vote for Barack Obama. It seemed at first to be an isolated fluke, perhaps signifying only that my friends know some strange conservatives. But apparently columnist Robert Novak has encountered the same phenomenon and has coined the term "Obamacons" to describe the conservatives for Senator Obama. Now the San Francisco Chronicle has run a feature article, titled "Some Influential Conservatives Spurn GOP and Endorse Obama." In it they quote various conservatives on...

A number of friends of mine have commented on an odd phenomenon that they have observed — conservative Republicans they know who are saying that they are going to vote for Barack Obama. It seemed at first to be an isolated fluke, perhaps signifying only that my friends know some strange conservatives. But apparently columnist Robert Novak has encountered the same phenomenon and has coined the term "Obamacons" to describe the conservatives for Senator Obama. Now the San Francisco Chronicle has run a feature article, titled "Some Influential Conservatives Spurn GOP and Endorse Obama." In it they quote various conservatives...

Recent comments by well-known black Republicans J.C. Watts and Armstrong Williams that they're conflicted about the upcoming presidential elections and are contemplating voting for Barack Obama have sent shock waves through the Republican Party. I'm hearing many black Republicans echoing similar sentiments. They say that because of the historical significance of casting a vote for the first legitimate black presidential candidate, they may cross party lines. These statements don't surprise me.

By Nina May (AXcess News) - In the mid 1980's I debated Gloria Steinhem on the Phil Donahue show, during the presidential campaign where Geraldine Ferraro was the first woman Vice Presidential candidate. The assumption by feminists, like Gloria, was that all women should vote for Geraldine because she was a woman. I asked her if she would be supporting Phyllis Schlafly if she were the candidate instead of Geraldine, and if she would be offended if I made that same assumption. When Allen Keyes was running for president, as probably one of the most brilliant candidates we have ever...

The "Obamacans" that Sen. Barack Obama used to joke about - Republican apostates who whispered their support for his candidacy - have morphed into a new phenomenon, or syndrome, as detractors like to call it: the Obamacons. These are conservatives who have publicly endorsed the presumptive Democratic nominee, dissidents from the brain trust of think tanks, ex-officials and policy magazines that have fueled the Republican Party since the 1960s. Scratch the surface of this elite, and one finds a profound dismay that is far more damaging to the GOP than the usual 10 percent of registered Republicans expected to switch...

Peggy sent me this. Emily Nordling has never met a Muslim, at least not to her knowledge. But this spring, Ms. Nordling, a 19-year-old student from Fort Thomas, Ky., gave herself a new middle name on Facebook.com, mimicking her boyfriend and shocking her father. “Emily Hussein Nordling,” her entry now reads. "I mean, like, isn't that, you know, like, just you know like the coolest thing like in the world?" Or sumpin' like that. With her decision, she joined a growing band of supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who are expressing solidarity with him by...

What is an "Obamacon?" The phrase surfaced in January to describe British conservatives entranced by Barack Obama. On March 13 the American Spectator broadened the term to cover all "conservative supporters" of the Democratic presidential candidate. Their ranks, though growing, feature few famous people. But looming on the horizon are two big potential Obamacons: Colin Powell and Chuck Hagel.

What is an "Obamacon?" The phrase surfaced in January to describe British conservatives entranced by Barack Obama. On March 13 the American Spectator broadened the term to cover all "conservative supporters" of the Democratic presidential candidate. Their ranks, though growing, feature few famous people. But looming on the horizon are two big potential Obamacons: Colin Powell and Chuck Hagel. Neither Powell, first-term secretary of state for George W. Bush, nor Hagel, retiring after two terms as a U.S. senator from Nebraska, has endorsed Obama. Hagel probably never will. Powell probably will enter Obama's camp at a time of his own...

The New Yorker is hardly the optimal vehicle for reaching the conservative intelligentsia. But, last year, Barack Obama cooperated with a profile for that magazine where he seemed to be speaking directly to the right. Because he paid obeisance to the virtues of stability and continuity, his interlocutor, Larissa MacFarquhar, came away with the impression that the Illinois senator was an adherent of Edmund Burke: "In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative." As The New Yorker's assessment shot...

WASHINGTON -- Word spread like wildfire in Catholic circles: Douglas Kmiec, a staunch Republican, firm foe of abortion and veteran of the Reagan Justice Department, had been denied communion. His sin? Kmiec, a Catholic who can cite papal pronouncements with the facility of a theological scholar, shocked old friends and adversaries alike earlier this year by endorsing Barack Obama for president. For at least one priest, Kmiec's support for a pro-choice politician made him a willing participant in a grave moral evil. Kmiec was denied communion in April at a Mass for a group of Catholic business people he later...

Key to Obama's strength in California, at this point, is the group that was largely ignored in the run-up to the primary: men. Overall, Obama held a 10-point advantage over McCain among men, while Clinton split men with McCain. White men gave McCain a three-point advantage over Obama, and a wider 15-point edge over Clinton. Nonwhite men sided with the Democrats in landslide proportions. With Republicans now only about one-third of the California electorate, GOP candidates must reach deeply into the ranks of moderates if they are to win statewide. There, McCain was faltering. He was losing moderates to Clinton...

I've never been a fan of John McCain. Not only is he not a conservative, he may have done more damage to the conservative movement than any other Republican over the last few years. Look back at the Gang-of-14, global warming, McCain-Feingold, coddling terrorists at Gitmo, illegal immigration -- on and on and on, and you'll remember John McCain working feverishly with liberals to defeat conservatives. For that reason, John McCain was not someone I backed for the Presidency. My order of preference for President was Duncan Hunter (whom I consulted for), Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and then,...