An Elephant's Colin-oscopy >>

Some people were shocked by Colin Powell’s decision to endorse Barack Obama. I was not. What baffled me is that he calls himself a Republican, then, now, and into the future. There was so much of his candidate that he had to overlook, and so much that he had to abandon. Or did he? He fed his opaque reasoning to members of the press that he saw a shift to the far right in the GOP, when this is contradicted by the record of GOP officials demoralizing their base and moving to the left for the past 8 years on a range of issues. It just does not fit!

So what was the anatomy of his thinking? Truth is, Colin Powell has had a soldier’s life of rising though the ranks and respectfully attaining positions, giving counsel to elected leaders, and graciously accepting well-deserved appointments. All of the enemies Powell has faced have been literal enemies, not complex ideologies. As an appointed statesman he has never had to reach out to demographics, but rather to emissaries and diplomats. Imagine this: when Napoleon returned a decorated general to the French Republic after his campaigns across the continent, he was dripping with glory and leadership, giving him strong vindication for the coup d’état that was to ensue. He was above Robespierre and the squabbling right and left based on the sheer nobility of his office. He did not have to answer complex questions, save addressing a raw and organic populist appeal as a “man of action.” Colin Powell could run and win like Eisenhower, never facing a daunting question in his campaign or presidency. That is the human history of generals. People love victory. Conservatives love it, Liberals love it (perhaps not so outwardly), Moderates love it. The only people who don’t are cowards who bet against victory in war time, state affirmatively it will fail, and fear its arrival… and then milk said surge benefits by reappointing Bob Gates and delaying original pullout plans. But back to point, victory, even in the war socialism of the World Wars, was paramount to the most nationalist cords of American achievement. The point being: Powell is immune to politics as folks Norm Coleman or John McCain would know it. The goddess of victory preempts platforms.

In explaining his reasoning, Powell made some declarations about Republicans reaching out to blacks that are supremely oblivious to the realities of identity politics today. He essentially accused Republicans of barking to blacks to “pull themselves up by their boot straps” as though it were tired sophistry. (now I always notice the points at which Fareed Zakaria, the interviewer and author of “The Post American World,” chooses to nod at Powell’s utterances about the GOP). Yet today, liberal black pundits like Juan Williams have even begun calling for more accountability and better leadership in the black community, in addition to the more obvious faces like Bill Cosby. It is about time. It has been half a century since the Civil Rights Movement, and Hispanics have surpassed blacks in median income and influence, and so have various other groups in America. So bootstraps are still a good idea. Powell makes this blatantly obtuse assertion in a time in which Bush’s largess to minority communities outsteps that of his Democrat predecessor, that his immigration policy was decidedly merciful against the admonitions of craggier Republicans like me, and that we never pulled the race card ONCE during the campaign in spite of Obama’s numerous evocations thereof. Conservative forbearance on race was so clear that the left even had to resort to saying our bigotry was “coded” and “latent.” Powell also went on to say that we have to begin listening to blacks, in spite of the fact that we go up against a party that takes minority voters for granted. In fact, as Thomas Sowell pointed out, whenever we do give speeches or townhall meetings to minorities, we choose the venue of entrenched minority Liberal outfits like La Raza and NAACP, where we get booed and tackled before the folks can listen. Talking to blacks, for instance, means speaking through their gatekeepers and having our message distorted and followed after in our absence. And it is grafittied over by those very minority leaders who serve as the vestiges of a politically closed and inert society, still living in the 1960s. Yes, Powell, we bent over backwards to accommodate, and were ignored by the MSM or slandered in our efforts. It was called “compassionate conservatism;” it pumped treasure galore towards minority achievement in ways that ruffled the feathers of the GOP for the last 8 years,  and in addition to falsely implied a lack of compassion with regular conservatism, it simply did not work to garner black voters. After all, our speech and actions pass through the filters of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other “honkey” translators. The way I see it, Powell essentially called us to become Democrats on the affirmative action issue, or at least disregard Amendments 13-15 that grant equality to all and embrace the failed “separate but equal” mindset. We have listened and will always listen, Mr. Powell. That does not necessarily mean it has produced anything of value to the party’s long-term success! Nor does it mollify the woes that are mostly endogenous to the Black Community, which are blamed on us while we have limited or no access to refute it.

Regarding Powell’s assertions about Palin as divisive, he must have squinted and looked right past a sordid horrorhouse of Obama’s colleagues, as well as an infanticidal voting record that would outperform Molech’s alters, extremist views on distribution of wealth, endless class bating…that is… when Obama possessed the stones and spine to vote anything other than “present.” McCain and Palin have both bucked their party in their respective theaters, and Obama has NEVER demonstrated that similar spirit, and in order to prove his maverick mettle, he often cites the uncorroborated hallway whispers of asking his fellow senators to eat at McDonald’s (yep, Ronald McDonald will decapitate corruption and partisan gridlock, not let’s say…lawmaking). Barack Hussein Obama had even outwardly mocked Christianity in 2006 at the Call to Renewal Conference, lambasting the Old and New Testament as crusty and obsolete with the same oversimplified and uninformed arguments of Atheists Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins (I am resisting the temptation at deconstructing and shaming another Liberal’s Biblical illiteracy for time’s sake). He ran a classist campaign, reaving Rich America from Working America, Wall St. from Main St., and later ridiculed Midwesterners to a group of wealthy elite and progressive west coast donors as clinging to their “guns and religion” and “bigotry” through sheer bitterness. Sure, Mr. Powell… his campaign rhetoric was astoundingly immaculate. In addition to all of this, Colin Powell made his choice not on the careers of McCain and Obama, but on how they ran their campaigns. Perhaps this was the fact that Obama had no career, and that it is debatable as to whether it was Colin Powell or John McCain who complied more with Bush policy.

Finally, there is the false notion that Colin Powell speaks for the Republican Party. I mean, sure CNN adores Republicans that dump on Republicans. That is the role of the one “in-house conservative” in mainstream news. No surprise there. But Powell occupies the gun control, affirmative action, pro-choice, Internationalist wing of the Republican Party…you know… one deck below the Giuliani wing of the GOP. Our principled mouthpiece. Ha!

Yep. I buy it. You buy it?

We do listen to black people (even when doing so earns us even more contempt),  and we pumped all sorts of largess to minority achievement. You are, Mr. Powell, a Republican in name only, based on the issues you stand on, the fact that you ignored Obama’s divisive rhetoric and gave him a freebee on his Chicago cronies, and you focused on campaigns, not careers.

Mr. Powell, I respect your service to our nation and I will be eternally grateful for that. I did not expect you to even back Republicans this go around. Yet I did expect you to formulate better arguments for doing so. And I believe you let me down. >>