Sorry, but this is rather pathetic:
In the latest round of the increasingly heated intra-GOP feud, former Secretary of State Colin Powell Sunday defended his Republican credentials and fired back at radio host Rush Limbaugh and former Vice President Dick Cheney, saying the party had to expand beyond its conservative base.
“Rush will not get his wish and Mr. Cheney was misinformed – I am still a Republican,” Powell said in a much-anticipated interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” two weeks after Cheney suggested on the same show that the retired general had left the party by endorsing Barack Obama last fall.
Powell outlined his party bona fides, noting his votes for and services under a string of Republican presidents, and said it was not up to Cheney and Limbaugh – the radio host has kept up a steady drumbeat of criticism since Powell’s cross-party endorsement last year – to determine who belonged in the GOP.
By its fruit is the tree known – and part of Powell’s fruit is President Barack Obama. And nothing wrong with that – Powell is free to endorse whom he will; but if you are to be a member of the Republican party it is expected that you won’t endorse the Democrat. Heck, all Powell would have had to do to keep in good GOP graces is not endorse anyone and then vote however he felt. But an endorsement indicates a support for not just a person – in this case, Barack Obama – but for his platform, and Obama’s platform is in opposition to the Republican platform. This isn’t a dispute about whether or not a pro-choice person can be GOP but whether or not a GOPer should, at the end of the day, be Republican.
Our liberal friends (as it were) wish very much for us to have a debate about whether or not moderates can be Republicans – they want us to have this debate, mark my words, not out of solicitude for our party’s future. No, they just want us clawing at each other – and in this desire, Colin Powell and Arlen Specter have been vastly useful to the Democrats. Arlen had to switch over to have even a ghost of a chance next year, but Powell can save his party-switch to the most opportune moment – ie, whenever the Democrats need such a splash to get subject off their idiocy and back on to anything else (who asked Powell to fire back? Why did he need to? Curious that this comes at a time when Cheney is mopping the floor with Obama on national security and Pelosi teeters on the verge of resignation). Powell can claim he’s a GOPer till the cows come home but that won’t change the fact that since last year, he has been diligently and effectively advancing the cause of the Democrat party.
The real debate for us to have is not “moderate vs conservative” in the GOP, but “people vs powerful” in the United States. Anyone who will join us in fighting the powerful should be welcomed with open arms – right now, Powell is working for the powerful; he’s not on our side, and we shouldn’t allow anyone to say he is.
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