I think it's more based on him getting used like a cheap whore by the Bush Administration

Why would anyone give a shit what Pat Buchanan has to say?
If it was racially motivated, he would have done it long ago. Obama didn't turn black today.

What possible intelligent comment could one make on this?

An intelligent comment?

Do you think that Powell endorsed Obama based on his race?

An honest yea or nay.

How blind, how negligent to reality must one be to stoop to such a claim?

I think Powell endorsed Obama because they're both secret Muslims. Who have both regularly attended Christian churches all their lives. They're good.

Sneaky.

Of course it wasn't racially motivated. This is a rather lame attempt from the Neocons to discredit Powell's speech, but they can't. What he had to say was inspiring and brilliant. You can't denigrate that sort of intellectual momentum.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Colin-Powell-Endorses-Barack-Obama-on-Meet-The-Press

For anyone who has heard this, the answer is pretty obvious.

I don't.

Powell has never characterized himself publicly as being racialized (hip hop dancing aside). He is solid on politics and issues, and to think that he would deviate from that this late in the campaign to forward a personal agenda based on race is ridiculous.

This is typical reactionary politics, with the opposition clearly having not actually listened to the facts of Powell's argument - fear mongering at its basest levels.

George Will and his ilk debunking a general who himself can be historically characterized as a Republican maverick, and a well-respected one at that, is a sad attempt to silence an opposing viewpoint and continue the blind negativity that Powell was protesting. Sad.

I believe, because I do not know Ret General Powell personally, that he is an upstanding person and failed to exercise his duty to stand up to the president while giving false information to the UN.

But because he failed to do so, I do not place any negative moral fortitude on the man(because he may have knew something I did not, or was in a dangerous position at the time dissent would have been threatening to his livelihood), and his opinion is like all of ours priceless (mean that in a good way).

Colin Powell's black???

Must be because I associate him with Bush, but I have never thought of him as anything other than one of the evil white guys in the white house.

His reasons were political not racial. He's not exactly a true conservative. Isn't his wife liberal? That un-affiliates him with the (republican) party in my opinion j/k


I'm thinking he chose this time to say it to maximize the impact of his endorsement. Obviously he's been distancing himself from the Bush administration. Since things are looking good for Obama, this endorsement towards the end will look good for him if he were to lobby for an appointment from Obama after he's president.

Maybe he wants to retire...and he's doing some reputation repair first. If McCain wins, then it will always be said that Powell endorsed Obama.

So not one person who posted here thinks Powell's endorsement was racially motivated.

I'm relieved.

The real racism is on the part of George Will and Pat Buchanan and people like them to even suggest such a thing.

^That's because they're leftists.

i think it was intelligently motivated

So what if it was racially motivated? It probably wasn't the sole reason for his endorsement, but it might have played a part in it. I don't understand how that's supposed to be negative or how any white American can even begin to judge him (or any black person for that matter) for it.

He's living in a country founded by slave owners, where slavery was legal for more than two hundred years and would probably remain legal to this very day if it was up to the people of every individual state. All the 43 presidents up to this point were white and black people are still struggling for equal treatment today. For centuries black Americans have dreamed of the day of the Inauguration of a black American President. You can't consider that to be racist, it's just another step towards true equality and a big one at that.

A couple of days ago I read a comment on this site where a member claimed that black people voting for Obama because he's black is the same as white people voting for McCain because he's white. He said it's the same kind of racism. This would be true, if:

• White Americans were at some point enslaved to black slave owners for a period no shorter than 200 years.
  
  
• Half the presidents up to this point had been black Americans.
  
  
• The number of black Americans was about equal to the number of caucasian Americans.
  

But since that's nowhere near the truth I can only shake my head at such a statement.

Saying that race has absolutely nothing to do with Powell's endorsement is foolish too. The question we should be asking ourselves is: So what if it is? Wouldn't he have every reason to yearn for a black president? Wouldn't he rightly see it as a great achievement in the long struggle black people have had to endure? Do you honestly believe that he doesn't care at all about it?

I can understand that you all think you have to deny that there could be any racial motivation on Powell's side, but I honestly don't think that taking race out of the discussion is the right thing to do. You can't fight racism with ignorance. Instead you should be asking people like Buchanan about the possible reasons a black person could have for a racially motivated vote and how the reasons for it can be very different from a white persons racially motivated vote.

Powell is a well-known Republican supporter for the most part. If he was influenced that easily by race, he wouldn't have the reputation he has (or perhaps had before this endorsement) with republicans.

>> ^blankfist:
^That's because they're leftists.


...(deep sigh)....

"So what if it was racially motivated?"

Though you made many good points in your post, I think that claiming that Powell chose to support Obama based on race alone not only ignores reality, but completely undermines all of the very valid points that he made to justify his endorsement, points that millions of Americans, of every race and ethnicity, agree with completely.

I think it cheapens our political process even more than it already is, which is scraping rock bottom.

When Buchanon, Will, and Limbaugh claimed that it was a race-based endorsement, all they did was choose to ignore the substance of the points that Powell made, and focus on the superficial coincidence that both Powell and Obama happen to be black.

My endorsement of Obama is racially motivated. The white man and his greed has brought us into this shit-heap of trouble. The worst we'll get from Obama is some spinnin' rims paid for by our tax dollars. I can live with our president ridin' on 24's.

It couldn't have been racially motivated, since Obama isn't black anyway. But it probably would have been if it could have been.

QI, actually. A lot of feminists were upset about Hillary not making it and some are still confused about whether or not to support Palin. Which, frankly, I think is absurd, but apparently it is ok to think along those lines. So it almost seems as if women supporting a woman just because you share XX-chromosomes is fine, white people voting for other white people has been the standard for decades, but someone with Jamaican parents endorsing a person whose father was from Kenya is suspicious.

Fortunately, Powell did a great job in explaining why he made his choice. And I personally believe his endorsement is probably more anti-Republican than anti-white.

I've heard a lot of talk about women supporting Palin because of Hillary, but I've seen little or no evidence of it.

What I have heard are a lot of women who were insulted that someone would think they'd vote for Palin just because she was a woman.

There are quite a few Republicans who are coming out for Obama, and many of them happen to be white.

If Powell's endorsement is racially motivated, please explain to me why Condaleeza Rice hasn't endorsed Obama, too.

... mean-spirited and dismissive to second-guess the numerous clearly presented reasons Powell described for why he prefers not to back his party's choice.


I think George Will wishes he had the balls to abandon McCain publicly... still a couple weeks, maybe he'll be a late October convert.