Children of Iconic Republicans May Vote Democratic

People often vote differently from their parents. Each generation has its own set if ideas and beliefs and the standards of the parents are not necessarily the standards to which the child wants to cling. Many of the Republicans who exist today are children of acid dropping parents who danced naked at songfests and protested the war (many of those parents still do). I see nothing new or ground breaking in this article BBB.

Since you are so good at digging up articles, perhaps you would also be so kind as to locate the numerous articles showing children of Democrats skipping merrily over to the Republican side of the aisle.

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I would leave that task to you since you are interested.

BBB

Republicans Defect to the Obama Camp
Republicans Defect to the Obama Camp
By Sarah Baxter
The Sunday Times UK
Sunday 06 May 2007

Disillusioned supporters of President George W Bush are defecting to Barack Obama, the Democratic senator for Illinois, as the White House candidate with the best chance of uniting a divided nation.

Tom Bernstein went to Yale University with Bush and co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team with him. In 2004 he donated the maximum $2,000 to the president's reelection campaign and gave $50,000 to the Republican National Committee. This year he is switching his support to Obama. He is one of many former Bush admirers who find the Democrat newcomer appealing.

Matthew Dowd, Bush's chief campaign strategist in 2004, announced last month that he was disillusioned with the war in Iraq and the president's "my way or the highway" style of leadership - the first member of Bush's inner circle to denounce the leader's performance in office.

Although Dowd has yet to endorse a candidate, he said the only one he liked was Obama. "I think we should design campaigns that appeal, not to 51% of the people, but bring the country together as a whole," Dowd said.

Bernstein is a champion of human rights, who admires Obama's call for action on Darfur, while Dowd's opposition to the war has been sharpened by the expected deployment to Iraq of his son, an Arabic-speaking Army intelligence specialist.

But last week a surprising new name joined the chorus of praise for the antiwar Obama - that of Robert Kagan, a leading neoconservative and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century in the late 1990s, which called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Kagan is an informal foreign policy adviser to the Republican senator John McCain, who remains the favoured neoconservative choice for the White House because of his backing for the troops in Iraq.

But in an article in the Washington Post, Kagan wrote approvingly that a keynote speech by Obama at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs was "pure John Kennedy", a neocon hero of the cold war.

In his speech, Obama called for an increase in defence spending and an extra 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 marines to "stay on the offense" against terrorism and ensure America had "the strongest, best-equipped military in the world". He talked about building democracies, stopping weapons of mass destruction and the right to take unilateral action to protect US "vital interests" if necessary, as well as the importance of building alliances.

"Personally, I liked it," Kagan wrote.

Disagreements on the war have not stopped John Martin, a Navy reservist and founder of the website Republicans for Obama, from supporting the antiwar senator. He joined the military after the Iraq war and is about to be deployed to Afghanistan.

"I disagree with Obama on the war but I don't think it is a test of his patriotism," Martin says. "Obama has a message of hope for the country."

Financiers have also been oiling Obama's campaign. In Chicago, his home town, John Canning, a "Bush pioneer" and investment banker who pledged to raise $100,000 for the president in 2004, has given up on the Republicans. "I know lots of my friends in this business are disenchanted and are definitely looking for something different," he said.

Not to be outdone, Hillary Clinton has many Republican defectors of her own, including John Mack, chief executive of Morgan Stanley, who helped raise $200,000 for the president's reelection, qualifying him as a "Bush ranger". He said last week that he was impressed by Clinton's expertise. "I know we're associated mainly with the Republicans but we've always gone for the individual," Mack said.

According to figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, Obama and Clinton have vacuumed up more than $750,000 (£375,000) in individual contributions from former Bush donors.

Some of the donations reflect the natural tendency of those with power to shift to the likely White House winner. Penny Pritzker, the staggeringly successful head of fundraising for Obama, voted for John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic candidate, but also donated that year to Bush. As she was a head of the family-run Hyatt hotel chain, it was considered a prudent move.

With the Democrats widely expected to win in 2008, Clinton's status as frontrunner is encouraging Wall Street money to migrate to her, while Obama may be picking up some mischievous "Stop Hillary" donations from still-loyal Republicans. But there is plenty of genuine enthusiasm to go around.

A poll released by Rasmussen last week showed Obama overtaking Clinton for the first time by 32% to 30%, although another poll by Quinnepiac showed her with a 14-point lead over the Illinois senator, her nearest rival.

The current issue of the New Yorker contains a profile of Obama, which highlights his appeal to conservatives.

For his optimism about the future, Obama has been dubbed the "black Ronald Reagan". He frequently challenges the black community to support two-parent families and encourage school students, instead of criticising them for "acting white".

Rep. leaders may desert Bush as the President's poll slump
Republican leaders may desert Bush as the President's poll figures slump
By David Usborne in New York
Published: 07 May 2007
Independent UK

President George Bush was confronting some of the worst polling numbers of his two terms in office yesterday amid growing signs of disquiet about his policies in Iraq from senior members of his own party on Capitol Hill.

A poll published by Newsweek showed the President earning the support of just 28 per cent of voters, the lowest number he has ever scored in the weekly magazine's survey.

Almost two out of three Americans polled said that his actions in Iraq show he is "stubborn and unwilling to admit his mistakes".

The survey seems to reflect growing scepticism surrounding Mr Bush's so-called surge policy, in which 30,000 additional troops are being deploying to enforce security in Baghdad. Suicide bombings have continued to rock the Iraqi capital, with casualty numbers mounting unabated.

This public concern was echoed by John Boehner, the leader of the minority Republicans in the House of Representatives, who warned that unless success comes by the end of the summer, Mr Bush will be asked by his own party, and not just the Democrats, to change course.

"We don't even have all of the 30,000 additional troops in Iraq yet, so we're supporting the President. We want this plan to have a chance of succeeding. Over the course of the next three to four months, we'll have some idea how well the plan's working," he said, adding: "By the time we get to September or October, members are going to want to know how well this is working, and if it isn't, what's Plan B?"

President Bush vetoed a bill last week authorising $124bn (£62bn) in funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan which included provisions added by the Democrat majority to begin a withdrawal of American troops from Iraq on 1 October. The White House will continue trying to negotiate some form of compromise on the bill with the Democratic leadership this week.

The struggle over policy in Iraq is damaging the standing of Mr Bush but possibly also the Republican hopefuls for the 2008 presidential race. The Newsweek poll showed Democrat runners such as Senator Barak Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton leading Republican candidates in head-to-head match-ups by healthy margins. If pitted against Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, for instance, Mr Obama would prevail, the poll said, by a margin of 50 to 43 per cent.

Another Democrat campaigning for the presidential nomination, John Edwards, began running television spots last week urging his party in Congress to refuse to compromise on its demand for a phased troop withdrawal. "America has asked the Democratic leadership in the Congress to stand firm, and that's exactly what I'm saying they should do," he said.

No, no. I would not want to impinge upon your hours of thrilling research.