After the much ballyhooed Powell endorsement, Obama has racked up quite a group of prominent Republican supporters for his candidacy. In addition to Powell, Obama has been endorsed by Christopher Buckley, Michael Smerconish, Susan Eisenhower, and the Chicago Tribune. One would think a rational Obama, would go running like a frightened schoolmarm from this ignoble list of rapacious individuals (good Republicans are people such as Lincoln Chafee, Jim Jeffords and Kevin Phillips, men who left the party long ago to cannibalize itself, while destroying the country and others in its wake); who aren’t ashamed to be listed amongst the ranks of one of the most backward thinking parties ever assembled in human history. A party that has little or no respect for the Constitution, average workers, the elderly, veterans, the disabled, and many more groups and things that most Americans care a great deal about. But no, Obama is embracing their endorsements, and wearing them as if they’re a badge of honor.
Republicans have nothing to fear by endorsing Barack Obama, they know he will do little or nothing to threaten the elite designed status quo in this country (and the whole world really). In the final debate with McCain, Obama said he supported free trade (he supports agreements such as the Peru trade agreement which may not be as bad as the Colombian one but it’s not fair trade). Obama is also on the record as supporting increasing the military budget, and escalating the War on Terror. I guess no one told Obama we’re also losing the war in Afghanistan (I thought you were opposed to dumb wars Barack?). The Taliban has reconstituted itself, and a top British commander recently said the war is not winnable. Obama will be U.S. Imperialism-lite. He’s just what the empire needs to put it back in good standing with the global elites who control the vast majority of the wealth on this planet.
These elites don’t mind us kicking all sorts of smaller countries around a little (or more than a little), just as long as we do it with the appropriate amount of lip service to human rights and democracy, and an effective marketing campaign. Bush of course, did little of this, and used raw Texas machismo to bully our way around the world. This didn’t appeal to the refined sensibilties of the global plutocracy, so a new fresh, more humane face is needed. And this is the most significant change that we’ll see in the foreign policy arena. We won’t see Obama stop trying to destabilize (working with the most vile reactionaries in these countries) progressive leaders like Hugo Chavez, and Evo Morales. We won’t see America become a humanitarian superpower, instead of only a miliitary one (it’s even questionable if we are, with more and more foreign policy analysts saying we are already in a multi-polar world). In my opinion we’ll see more Clintonianism only the Obamian version.
More accomodation to big business, corporate globalization, and the religious right, all brought together into one big melting pot of corporatist ‘centrism’. Will Barack Obama imprison as many as Bill Clinton did? Will he oversee the execution of a retarded man as Bill Clinton did? Will he bring us more middle class busting, and third world worker enslaving ‘free’ trade agreements? Will he bring us faux humanitarian wars that are really about global hegemony and neocolonialism? Republicans know when they see someone they can work with on their backwards agenda, and Barack Obama is just their kind of man. These Republicans have seen the man that Barack Obama can be, and decided to openly declare their vigorous support for his candidacy.
