By Nicholas (filling in for Damozel) | Yet another Republican intends to vote for Obama. He said to Fareed Zakaria:
"Well let's put it this way - I think Colin Powell's decision is in fact the good housekeeping seal of approval on Barack Obama."
Powell served as national security advisor to Reagan during Duberstein's tenure as chief of staff. (CNN)
Duberstein, like so many others, thinks Palin lacks the qualifications to be VP. Or, as Jed Lewison puts it, "he launched into a full-fledged assault on John McCain's judgment for selecting Sarah Palin." (video after the jump)
"Even at McDonalds you get interviewed three times," [Duberstein] said, calling the verdict of the people "resounding" on Palin's unreadiness.
At The Moderate Voice, Pete Abel says:
Welcome aboard, Mr. Duberstein — you “former Reagan Chief of Staff and longtime GOP insider” you. With Pressler and Mathias, that makes three more of us this week alone.
And so on … as Mr. Vonnegut (were he still alive) might conclude.
And Abel's got a little list (with links to all the stories):
Susan Eisenhower, Christopher Buckley, Alison Goldwater Ross, C.C. Goldwater, Francis Fukuyama, Larry Hunter, William Weld, David Friedman, Charles Fried, Arne Carlson, Ken Adelman, Doug Kmiec, Wayne Gilchrest, Jim Leach, Lincoln Chafee, Lowell Weicker, Linwood Holton, Jim Whitaker, Bill Ruckelshaus, Dennis Sanders, Larry Pressler, Charles Mathias Jr., Ken Duberstein
Read 'em and weep, McCain campaign.
Salon muses:
Sometimes, earlier this year, the Republican primaries seemed to be a contest where the winner would be determined based on which candidate could use the words "Ronald Reagan" most often. It's hard to imagine there'll be much mention of the former president and conservative icon today, though. That would bring up a recent event that's decidedly less comfortable for the GOP: Former Reagan Chief of Staff Kenneth Duberstein has endorsed Barack Obama.
BooMan says:
There are some grown-ups (to use one of the Village's favorite terms) in the Grand Old Party. There are conservatives that can see beyond ideology and truly put Country First. And it's very important that so many of them are coming out and endorsing Obama and Biden because they are signaling that the new administration has legitimacy. They are putting the lie to all the noise about Obama being a radical or mysterious or an enigma, or worse....
It's even more important that this is the case because of all the damage McCain and Palin have done in their long-shot effort to discredit and disqualify Obama. People have been badly misinformed and needlessly biased against our next president, and a lot of negative energy has been whipped up. I don't really know what is going to become of the rank-and-file Republican Party. I do know that, if they don't get their Palinites under control, the GOP Establishment isn't going to be able to get a nominee in 2012 that is acceptable to the broader public.
Matt Yglesias is starting to worry about the GOP.
On some level, I sort of regret seeing people like this hop onto the Obama bandwagon. Realistically, at some point the Republicans are going to come back into power and I’d prefer that to be a less-crazy version of the GOP. That’s going to require less-crazy people, people like Duberstein, to exert some influence and have some credibility.
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