US Presidential election - the Obamacons - Dismayed Republicans emerge as Barack Obama supporters - by Sara Baxter
What do the daughter of Richard Nixon, a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and the son of Milton Friedman, the monetarist economist, have in common? They are all Obamacons: conservatives, Republicans and free market champions who support Barack Obama, the Democratic party nominee, for president.
The Obama campaign has a sharp-eyed political operations team tasked with seeking out prominent endorsers “on both sides of the aisle”, according to a campaign official. It came tantalisingly close to securing one of the biggest names in politics when Colin Powell, secretary of state during President George W Bush’s first term in office, said last week that he might vote for Obama. Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute, a libertarian free market think tank in Washington, said he was “seriously thinking of pulling the lever” for Obama in November. Although he is lukewarm about some of his policies - particularly on free trade and tax and spending - he believes that “the post-partisan, postcultural war rhetoric of Barack Obama is deeply appealing”. There is also the question of pay-back for eight years of Republican mismanagement. “There is a good chunk of people, like myself, who believe the Republicans ought to go down in flames,” he said. “They have made a complete hash of things and they deserve to pay.”
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