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2/3/2008, "Why Republicans Like Obama," Peter Wehner, Washington Post
"Barack Obama is not only popular among Democrats, he's also an appealing
figure to many Republicans. Former GOP House member Joe Scarborough,
now a host on MSNBC, reports that after every important Obama speech, he
is inundated with e-mails praising the speech -- with most of them
coming from Republicans. William Bennett, an influential conservative
intellectual, has said favorable things about Obama. So have Rich Lowry
of National Review and Peggy Noonan. And so have I.
A number of prominent Republicans I know, who would wage a pitched
battle against Hillary Clinton, like Obama and would find it hard to
generate much enthusiasm in opposing him.
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What is at the core of Obama's appeal?
Part of it is the eloquence and uplift of his speeches, combined with
his personal grace and dignity.
By all accounts, Obama is a
well-grounded, decent, thoughtful man. He comes across, in his person
and manner, as nonpartisan. He has an unsurpassed ability to (seemingly)
transcend politics. Even when he disagrees with people, he doesn't seem
disagreeable. "You know what charm is," Albert Camus wrote in "The
Fall," "a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear
question." Obama has such charm, and its appeal is not restricted to
Democrats.
A second reason Republicans appreciate Obama is that he is pitted
against a couple, the Clintons, whom many Republicans hold in contempt.
Among the effects of the Obama-Clinton race is that it is forcing
Democrats to come to grips with the mendacity and ruthlessness of the
Clinton machine.
Conservatives have long believed that the Clintons are
an unprincipled pair who will destroy those who stand between them and
power -- whether they are political opponents, women from Bill Clinton's
past or independent counsels.
When the Clintons were doing this in the 1990s, it was viewed by many
Democrats as perfectly acceptable. Some even applauded them for their
brass-knuckle tactics. But now that the Clintons are roughing up an inspiring young man who appears to represent the hope and future of the
Democratic Party, the liberal establishment is reacting with outrage. "I
think we've reached an irrevocable turning point in liberal opinion of
the Clintons," writes Jonathan Chait of the New Republic. Many
conservatives respond: It's about time.
A third reason for Obama's GOP appeal is that unlike Clinton and
especially John Edwards, Obama has a message that, at its core, is about
unity and hope rather than division and resentment. He stresses that
"out of many we are one." And to his credit, Barack Obama is running a
color-blind campaign. "I did not travel around this state over the last
year and see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina," Obama
said in his victory speech last weekend. "I saw South Carolina." That
evening, his crowd of supporters chanted as one, "Race doesn't matter."
This was an electric moment.
Obama's words are in the great tradition of
Martin Luther King Jr. Obama, more than any figure in America, can help
bind up the racial wounds of America. In addition, for the past eight
years, one of the most prominent qualities of the American left has been
anger, which has served it and the country very poorly. An Obama
primary win would be a move away from the politics of rage.
The one thing that will keep Obama's appeal from translating into
widespread support among Republicans is that he is, on almost every
issue, a conventional liberal. And while rhetoric and character matter a
lot, politics is finally and fundamentally about ideas and philosophy.
Whether we're talking about the Iraq war, monitoring terrorist
communications, health care, taxes, education, abortion and the courts,
the size of government, or almost anything else, Obama embodies the
views of the special-interest groups on the left. In this respect, he
should borrow from the Clinton strategy in 1992, when Bill Clinton ran
as a "New Democrat," championed free trade, promised to "end welfare as
we know it" and criticized, on hawkish grounds, the "butchers of
Beijing."
Bill Clinton ran an intellectually creative race whose ideas appealed to
non-Democrats. Barack Obama has shown no such inclination so far (his
speeches, while inspiring, mostly avoid a serious discussion of
policies). If he wanted to demonstrate his independence from liberal
orthodoxy, for example, he could come out in favor of school choice for
low-income families, which would both help poor families and demonstrate
support for some of the best faith-based institutions in America: urban
parochial schools.
If Obama becomes the Democratic nominee and fails to take steps such as
this, his liberal views will be his greatest vulnerability. Obama will
try to reject the liberal label -- but based on his stands on the
issues, at least so far, the label will fit, and it will stick.
Barack Obama is among the most impressive political talents of our
lifetime. If he defeats Hillary Clinton, the question for the general
election is not whether he can transcend his race but whether he can
reach beyond his ideology."
"The writer, formerly deputy assistant to President Bush, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center." via Levin twitter
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Comment: Mr. Wehner uses the terms "Republican" and "conservative" interchangeably. They're not the same.
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