I’m a bit underwhelmed by the usually-quite-reliable London Times’ headline, “Republicans defect to the Obama camp.”
Prominent Bush donors Tom Bernstein and John Canning, sure. But they’re big-time finance guys. While I’m sure they have their issue preferences and reasons to like Obama, one can’t help but wonder if there’s a bit of financial-base covering here. Business donations are coming in droves for Democrats now that they control the House and Senate. If Obama looks like he has a good shot to be the next president, why not get in on the ground floor?
Matthew Dowd was a former Democratic strategist who signed on with Bush quite a few years back, who appears to have had a falling-out with the president. (In the interim, he also had what must have been some intensely painful personal trials – a loss of a child and a divorce.) Anyway, the only way that he’s in the Obama “camp” is a word of praise in the New York Times.
Robert Kagan’s op-ed praising Obama’s foreign policy vision wasn’t so much of a shift for him, but an argument to Democrats that even their beloved anti-war candidate believes in using military force to defend U.S. interest and promote democracy. It’s not that Kagan’s abandoning his old views and shifting to Obama’s – he’s pointing out that the next president, no matter his party, will end up changing policy only around the margins.