Ken Adelman, solid gold neo-con, lifelong Republican, somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan, is voting for Barack Obama:

When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.

Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.

That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.

So far we have Matthew Dowd, George Will, Christopher Hitchens, Kathleen Parker, David "she's a fatal cancer" Brooks, Peggy Noonan, Colin Powell and now Ken Adelman, (and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few,) all saying what I've said from the start, and what has been obvious from the start: Palin was a disastrous choice that laid bare John McCain's unsuitability for the White House.

The more dishonest Republicans want to keep pretending it's all some conspiracy by elitist Democrats. Democrats like Ken Adelman:

Ken Adelman is a lifelong conservative Republican. Campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001. Adelman’s friendship with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their wives goes back to the sixties, and he introduced Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz at a Washington brunch the day Reagan was sworn in.

Only dishonesty, party loyalty and sheer denial are holding back the coming flood on Palin. For every Powell or Adelman willing to step up and tell the truth there are thousands who would rather play "let's pretend," or think party loyalty comes before patriotism, but who know, nevertheless, that this was a fatally bad decision by McCain.

The full truth of what people on the right believe about Palin won't come out until the election is done. And then you will read and hear a tidal wave of disgust from the GOP as they finally confess what we all know they know.

That will be a lot of fun for us all, but we'll remember those who put country first and told the truth, and those who cowered and dissembled and hid behind party loyalty until it was politically safe to speak up.

(all bolds mine.)

This entry was posted by Michael Reynolds, on Tuesday, October 21, 2008. You can leave your response.