Things not looking good for John McCain

Meanwhile, Barack announces an international tour:

10 Reasons for Republicans to Vote for Obama

Barack and Michelle Obama are an inspiring example of traditional family values
A political candidate with a solid, traditional marriage without a hint of scandal.

Barack Obama will restore the rule of law and respect the Constitution
Obama will end torture, imprisonment without trial, extraordinary rendition, and the outsourcing on national security to mercenary armies that operate in a deliberately created legal vacuum.

Barack Obama will require fiscal responsibility
Obama will reinstate PAYGO, requiring that Congress pay for new spending by raising additional tax revenues or cutting existing spending.

Barack Obama will encourage energy independence
Obama plans to invest $150 billion over ten years to speed up the process of making the United States energy independent. Renewable energy will make the US economically independent and free it from international entanglements.

Barack Obama will put an end to grandiose nation-building schemes
Free Iraqis are just as capable of solving their own problems as we are of solving ours.

Barack Obama will respect science
Stem cell research, check. Global warming, check. Evolution, check.

Barack Obama will reintroduce Reaganesque face-to-face diplomacy
Nixon met with Mao, Ford met with Brezhnev, Reagan met with Gorbachev, and Obama will meet with whomever he needs to in order to promote freedom, peace and democracy.

Barack Obama is smart
Graduated Harvard magna cum laude, president and editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review. Enough said!

Barack Obama will lower taxes for 95% of Americans
Taxes will be cut on those making under $250,000. For those making over $250,000 who find they just can’t get by, I’m sure that those making less will be happy to volunteer their budgetary expertise.

Barack Obama will be good for the rich!
When the United States government starts to exercise fiscal responsibility, when the energy crisis is resolved, and when geopolitical tensions decrease, economic growth will be more dependable and the stock market will rebound.

Early Rumblings of an Avalanche of Republicans for Obama

Today's Times reports that General Colin Powell and Peggy Noonan are now potential Obama voters:

. . . Colin Powell, secretary of state during President George W Bush’s first term in office, said last week that he might vote for Obama.

Powell said Obama and John McCain, his Republican opponent, “have the qualifications to be president, but both of them cannot be”. He added that he would neither vote for Obama because he was African-Ameri-can nor for McCain because of his military service but for the individual who “brings the best set of tools to the problems of 21st-century America . . . regardless of party”.

His argument was echoed by Peggy Noonan, a conservative commentator who wrote woundingly in The Wall Street Journal last week that: “Mr McCain is the old America, of course; Mr Obama the new.” Although she did not explicitly back either candidate, she said: “America is always looking forward, not back, it is always in search of the fresh and leaving the tired. That’s how we started.” Link.

Obama is also making inroads among evangelicals:

Abortion and gay marriage have been regarded as non-negotiable issues, but more now see "whole of life" as more important, and have embraced causes such as climate change, Darfur and poverty, opening the door to voting for a candidate such as Mr Obama.

"Many of them have become very disillusioned with the Republican Party for the way they have been used. Their issues were raised in campaigns and not acted on," said Os Guinness, a leading evangelical scholar, adding that he once heard a senior White House staffer refer to evangelicals as "useful idiots".

"We are now seeing the end of the dominance of the Religious Right, the coalition that made it so powerful is breaking up," he said. Link.

And black conservatives:

Armstrong Williams, a black conservative radio host, is one such black Republican. For all his life, Williams had never voted for a Democratic candidate. However, Williams said that it could change with Obama as the presumed Democratic nominee.

It is obvious that black Democrats will be voting for Obama. Obama seems to have created internal sparks within the group of black Republicans. To them, this is the true battle of ethnicity and ideology.

“I don’t necessarily like his policies; I don’t like much that he advocates, but for the first time in my life, history thrusts me to really seriously think about it,” Williams explains. He adds: “I can honestly say I have no idea who I’m going to pull that for in November. And to me, that’s incredible.” Link.

Francis Fukuyama: from neocon to Obamacon

Francis Fukuyama has endorsed Barack Obama. Three quotes from his recent interview with Eleanor Hall:

"So I think the United States needs to reconnect with the world. It needs to do some symbolic things like, we shouldn't torture people, so as a first symbolic gesture I think the new president ought to close Guantanamo and I think in general what you need is a shift."

"I think of all the Republicans, McCain in many ways is the most attractive but he is still is too, you know, he comes from the school that places too much reliance on hard military power as a means of spreading American influence.

I think in many ways, Hillary Clinton represents both the good and the bad things of the 1990s and there is something in the style of the Clintons that never really appealed to me and so I think of all the three, Obama probably has the greatest promise of delivering a different kind of politics."

"I think that the politics of the country is going to be different. I think in tone and certainly in terms of the international perception of the United States, if you elected someone like Obama, it is really going to be really quite something I think to witness and I think that is why a lot of people would like to see him as president because it symbolises the ability of the United States really in some way to renew itself in a very unexpected way."

Dorothy King has listed some prominent Obamacons.

More on Fukuyama.

We ain’t mad at yah, Reverend Wright

An insightful column from Peggy Noonan:

But I am finding it hard to feel truly upset about what Mr. Wright has said. This is the out-of-stepness I referred to. So here I will talk not about how people will respond to him but how I do.

I do not feel a sense of honest anger or violation at his remarks, in part because I don’t think his views carry deep implications for our country. I have been watching America up close for many years—if you count a bright childhood, for half a century. I have seen, heard and respected the pain of a people who were forced to come here when they did not want to and made to live in a way that no one would want to. Who could deny them their grief or anger? I have seen radicalism and extremism, too. I have seen Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panthers, the Black National Anthem, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Louis Farrakhan. I came to see their radicalism as, putting the morality of policy based on rage aside, essentially unhelpful and impractical. It wouldn’t work as an American movement, not long-term. Hatred plays itself out, has power in the short-term but is nonsustaining in the long. America, and this is one of its glories, has a conscience to which an appeal can be made. It may take a long time, it may take centuries, but in the end we try hard to do the right thing, and everyone knows it. Hatred is a form of energy that does not fuel this machine and cannot make it run. Link.