THE phrase “Obamacon” now covers all “conser vative supporters” of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Their growing ranks feature few famous people – but looming on the horizon are two big potential Obamacons: Colin Powell and Chuck Hagel.
Neither Powell, President Bush’s first-term secretary of state, nor Hagel, retiring after two terms as US senator from Nebraska, has endorsed Obama. Hagel probably won’t. But Powell likely will enter Obama’s camp at a time of his own choosing.
The best bet is that neither of the two – Bush supporters in 2000 and 2004 – will back John McCain in 2008.
Powell, Hagel and lesser-known Obamacons harbor no animosity toward McCain. Nor do they show much affection for the rigidly liberal Obama. The Obamacon syndrome is based on hostility to Bush and his administration – and revulsion over today’s Republican Party.
The danger for McCain is that desire for a therapeutic electoral bloodbath can get out of control.
That peril was highlighted in a June article in The New Republic on “the rise of the Obamacons.” Its author was supply-side economist Bruce Bartlett, a middle-level official in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
He expressed “disgust with a Republican Party that still doesn’t see how badly George W. Bush has misgoverned this country” – echoing his scathing 2006 book, “Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.”
Bartlett says, “I’m not ready to join the other side” – his anti-Bush furor characterizes the Obamacons.
The prototypical Obamacon may be Larry Hunter, familiar inside the Washington Beltway as an ardent supply-sider.
Hunter was fired as US Chamber of Commerce chief economist in 1993 when he would not swallow Clinton administration policy, and later joined Jack Kemp at Empower America.
Explaining his support for the uncompromising liberal Obama, Hunter blogged on June 6: “The Republican Party is a dead rotting carcass with a few decrepit old leaders stumbling around like zombies in a horror version of Weekend With Bernie, handcuffed to a corpse.”
While he’d never use such language, Colin Powell is said by friends to share Hunter’s analysis of the GOP. His tenuous 13-year relationship with the party, following his retirement from the Army, has ended.
Powell left the Bush administration bitter about being ushered out of the State Department a year earlier than he wanted. Friends say he is sensitive to racial attacks on Obama and especially on his wife Michelle.
McCain strategists shrug off defections from Bruce Bartlett and Larry Hunter – but they wince in anticipating headlines generated by Powell’s expected endorsement of Obama.
While Powell may not be a legitimate Obamacon because he never was much of a conservative, that can’t be said for Hagel. He has built a solidly conservative record as a senator, but mutual friends see no difference between him and Gen. Powell on Iraq, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Bush and the Republican Party.
In a speech today at the Brookings Institution, Hagel is expected to urge both Obama and McCain to reach out to each other. At the least, Hagel isn’t ready to strap on armor for his longtime political ally and office neighbor, John McCain.
Published reports listing more Obamacons do not add up to tides of conservative Republicans leaving their party. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker is a Democrat who entered government in the Kennedy administration. Conservative commentator Armstrong Williams leads me to believe that he has no intention of endorsing Obama. Conservative author Richard J. Whalen is for Obama because he sees a dead Republican Party, but he also was for John Kerry in 2004.
Nevertheless, Obamacons – little and big – are reason for McCain’s concern. It also should cause soul-searching at the Bush White House to ponder who made the Republican Party so difficult a place for Republicans to stay.