John McCain may be the Republicans' only hope at holding onto the Presidency, but quite a few in the GOP have no desire to see him in office. They see him as a continuation of the failure that Bush brought upon our country and the destruction of the conservative brand. Plenty of conservatives will stay home this year, but a few prominent ones, people like Colin Powell, are doing a heck of a lot more.
From TPM:
This was reported a few days ago, but it got surprisingly little attention, and it seems worth flagging in light of Obama's trip abroad. Check out this little nugget buried in that New York Times piece on Barack Obama's cast of 300 or so foreign policy advisers:
Another person who has contributed outside advice is former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, whom Mr. Obama has been wooing. Mr. Powell, a Republican, has a friendship of decades with Mr. McCain, but friends say he has felt excluded from Mr. McCain's foreign policy operation and was impressed when Mr. Obama called on him in June. Mr. Powell also met around the same time with Mr. McCain.Powell recently met with Obama and has made it clear that he won't let any endorsement be dictated by party allegiance, so neglecting him seems like a pretty big oversight on the McCain camp's part. Could Obama's wooing of him eventually pay off?
A little bit of work can go a long, long way. Barack Obama's appeal transcends party lines. Though the most bitter of GOP partisans will never cross that line, many moderates are taking a close look at the Democratic nominee.
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