For growing the brand?

I know you can't se me, but I am standing and applauding right now.

"We are nihilists! We dzon't believes in anyting!"

-Karl Hungus

I'll take sum o' dem Obamacans as well.

The high-profile Obamacons (i.e. Kmiec & Hunter,) are endorsing him with eyes wide open.  They're not suggesting that Obama is secret conservative, nor that they can somehow force a shift in his position.  These are conservative American patriots who see that, in spite of significant disagreements, Obama is the best choice for the nation.

Hunter dreams a little bit that Obama might be more of a centrist, but notes his support does not hinge on that:

But overall, based on his embrace of centrist advisers and policies, it seems likely that Obama will turn out to be in the mold of John Kennedy - who was fond of noting that "a rising tide lifts all boats." Over the last few decades, economic growth has made Americans at every income level better off. For all his borderline pessimistic rhetoric, Obama knows this. And I believe he is savvy enough to realize that the real threat to middle-class families and the poor - an economic undertow that drags everyone down - cannot be counteracted by an activist government.

Or maybe not. But here's the thing: Even if my hopes on domestic policy are dashed and Obama reveals himself as an unreconstructed, dyed-in-the-wool, big-government liberal, I'm still voting for him.

These past eight years, we have spent over a trillion dollars on foreign soil - and lost countless lives - and done what I consider irreparable damage to our Constitution.

If economic damage from well-intentioned but misbegotten Obama economic schemes is the ransom we must pay him to clean up this foreign policy mess, then so be it. It's not nearly as costly as enduring four more years of what we suffered the last eight years.

The reverse just does not hold if you look at McCain.  You can dream that maybe he's not really as rigidly pro-life as his long record proves.  You can dream he'll be better on the economy than his record & rhetoric proves.  You can dream that he'll be better on woman's issues than his record proves... and on and on.  But these are all secondary to the central planks of his campaign which extends the war, the culture of torture, and so many more of what Hunter refers to "Venial sins".

people about my position.

i never referenced PUMA.  i said that this and most of its users are LIBERALS and thus, the promotion of conservative support is confusing.

hey - you want to paint BO as a blank canvas - go ahead.  im not joining you and thus will not set myself up to be disappointed.

Obamacans are a symptom of what makes this election so unique - on major issues, the Republican brand has been shown to be wrong.

Wrong on Foreign Policy, wrong on Healthcare, wrong on Fiscal responsibility, and wrong on economic management.

That's sad, but I still maintain that Conservatism is intellectually bankrupt, with exceptions like Frum, who doesn't seem to get much traction. They're stuck talking about taxes when it doesn't take a genius to figure out that our huge deficits have naitonal security complications.

What do you think William F. Buckley would do, were he alive today?  He was the quintessential partisan conservative, but he was not shy in talking about his distaste for W. Bush-brand conservitism or foreign policy.

here is a good essay on this from a conservative

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/ob ama

another

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/th e_daily_dish/2008/07/obama-on-foreig.htm l

A thought

The republicans that are being attracted are the ethical, intellectually honest ones.

The PUMA's are anything but. They sound like nothing so much as right-wing Fox/Hate Radio/Swiftboat dishonest spinners.

Maybe we'll end up with a coalition of ethical intellectually honest Americans of varying philosophies against the members of the slime machine.

Could be worse outcomes.

One of my best friends is a die hard Republican.  He has given me crap for almost 10 years about being a Democrat and he has proudly placed an Obama sign in his yard and has given the max amount to his campaign.  Last Saturday he went along with me to canvas here in Missouri.

He is still going to vote for the Republican candidate for governor here, and mostly republican on all down ticket races, but he is almost a bigger Obama fan than me.  When I asked why he said it was because he was honest and, get ready for this, a Christian.

I will never fully understand the mind of a conservative:P

Highly Rec'd!  You're so right, and this moment is too tremendously important to concern ourselves with fair-weather Democrats.  For as much as they claim to be life-long Democrats who deserve some due respect, they've clearly forfeited that respect to cross enemy lines.  

And just like many of the Reagan Democrats switched parties for good, there is a chance we can keep a lot of the support of the Obamacans in the future.  This election season just might be the end of Reagans politial agenda altogether.  It seems were ripe for a shift in the political climate that has plagued us since his presidency.

...I think you're right: there are more republicans to be won over than democrats to be lost. Obama isn't a blank canvas - he's just trying to create a new viable winning electoral constituency. As always, this pisses off a lot of people on the left, but these are not quite the same people as the PUMAs.

The reality is, during a GE, there are some on the left who will be disappointed by centrist moves, but they will never vote republican anyway. So it's all a marginal calculation of cost benefit.

Because he has broken out of the losing strategy of the last two General Elections, Obama will be seen as something of a blank canvas, a flip flopper, resisting the classic framing of the past. But that frame needed to be broken anyway.

The next five months will be tough on some who cling to the ideological certainties of the past. I suspect the PUMAs will consistently use this as a sign of betray - he's too liberal, he's too republican.

Let's take this disaffection as a sign something has been shattered. What comes might not be perfect. But it needed to happen