Plan B is Plan A is a Retread is Fine with Colin Powell
Unfortunately for Obama, Trump’s pathetic gambit failed to trump the headline that Obama is trying to pass off recycled retreads as new plans and that he was forced to do so after losing the first presidential debate to Mitt Romney, plunging in the polls and sending Democrats into a state of nauseated panic. How, they asked the campaign, could the president possibly win a second term in such a tight race without having outlined an agenda for the next four years? And so an eleventh-hour glossy appeared to answer the charge that Obama had nothing in mind for 2013-2017, with pretty pictures and pabulum to prove it. Brace yourself, the plans include a tax plan that cuts the deficit and creates jobs, energy made in America, a reminder of all that is good about ObamaCare, a pledge to stop Medicare or Social Security from being privatized, reviving manufacturing, investing in education and growing small businesses.
But it was a good enough plan to win the coveted endorsement of Colin Powell, so take that!
More seriously, a few words about the former Secretary of State.
I could understand Powell endorsing Obama in 2008. I could understand endorsing week-old roadkill over John McCain. I mean, that whole candidacy was one giant stinkbomb. Besides, Obama was promising centrism and budget cuts and stuff, and it took an eye far more discerning than Powell’s to see through Obama’s clever ruse.
(One moment please while I find a pair of needle-nose pliers long enough to extract my tongue from my cheek.)
And then — and I do mean this part with all sincerity — there was the racial healing that was supposed to come with electing our first black President.
So here’s where we might honestly feel some small bit of confusion over Powell’s endorsement. Our post-racial President has been playing the race card relentlessly for four years. He even played it on Bill Clinton during the 2008 primary, but maybe that details escaped Secretary Powell’s rapt attention. And it’s not like Obama has rescued the economy or fixed Too Big to Fail or saved Medicaid or postponed Social Security’s looming insolvency or cut the deficit in half or made us loved around the world again or any of those things he promised to do.
Then, too, we might honestly feel some more small bit of confusion because Mitt Romney is precisely Powell’s kind of Republican. They’re both moderates, and they’re both more than a little bit squishy in that famous Northeastern Mainline Republican way.
And yet, Powell endorsed the SCoaMF over his fraternal GOP twin.
It can’t be Obama’s record. It’s not that Romney represents the Tea Party Evangelical Knuckle-Dragging Warmonger wing of the GOP. Which leaves us just one thing.
Obama is black. So is Powell.
Forget that “content of his character” thing. Powell’s going for the black guy because he’s the black.
I thought we were supposed to be past all that.
But then Obama got sworn in.
I think it might be simpler than that. Read the Washington Post editorial endorsing President Obama for a second term, for example. That is the kind of company town thinking that Colin Powell and his types buy into. Mr Powell wants respect in conventional Washington, and his own policy proclivities lie in that direction. Why disturb the mighty and self-satisfied by bucking the company line? Never has Mr Powell exhibited other than a conventional Washington wisdom line of thinking.
The WaPo endorsement was bizarre in its content. They endorsed Obama while saying almost nothing good about his time in office except damning him with occasional faint praise. It was the worst “show of confidence” in an encumbent I have ever seen. It was like, “He kinda sucks, but let’s keep him anyway.”
Yes, but it fits in with the current Obama campaign slogan:”No really, he’ll do better next time.”
Hey, I’m real happy to see that Powell has permanently aligned himself with the Democrats. They can have him, we don’t want him.
That would certainly be the more honest step, both to himself and the public.
Maybe he’ll undergo a “surprising” change of ideology in 2016 when everyone is white.
Like Obama, he’s half white. Maybe these guys should start paying attention to their lighter-hued heritage.
Powell and Obama are two of a kind.
Both are affirmative-action darlings who were advanced over more qualified people for the most un-American reason: They have black skin.
A white general with Powell’s qualifications would never have been promoted over more experienced generals to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
A white person with Obama qualifications never would have been accepted at Harvard Law or nominated for President.
America has dealt with the race problem by instituting racism.
Very unconstitutional. Very sad. Ultimately very un-American.
Powell is a pariah to Republicans and conservatives, and he’s effectively locked out of their power structure after PlameGate (which was his snotty attempt to get rid of Dick Cheney). Powell also was wrong about the Iraq surge- he would have bugged out of there like it was Saigon ’75 all over again. His bluff was called back in ’04 and he hasn’t been the same since, and he resents the hell out of the GOP (both the grassroots and establishment) for it.
Oh, and he fully well knows that both McCain in ’08 and Romney in ’12 want nothing to do with him (moral of the story: don’t piss off Dick Cheney).
That’s why he’s with Obama. This is a long game for Mr. Powell, to ingratiate himself with the Democrats AND to continually thumb his nose at the Republicans over and over again. Plus, if he gets a job with a Obama second term, he’ll take it. It’s a sad denouement to a guy who was once a possible Presidential candidate, but turned out to be one of America’s worst political generals.
RCP has NC back in the toss up column.
As previously explained, RCP’s poll averages are crap.
Checked a little deeper, PPP released a poll today showing a tie at 48/48 bringing the average down from 50.3% yesterday to 50% today. They only had two other polls from Rasmussen and Gravis. Something I noticed from 2010 not much polling done in NC.
By the way, did you hear what John McCain said about this? Where was THAT McCain in 2008?
Remember the time John Sununu told Piers Morgan the same thing as VodkaPundit just told us, and the liberals went nuts?
http://twitchy.com/2012/10/26/groan-john-sununu-claims-colin-powell-supports-obama-because-both-men-are-black/