Obama Republicans

This article, by Bruce Bartlett of The New Republic, looks into the unusual phenomenon of conservatives backing Obama, with the most liberal voting record in the US Senate.

The Republican party could be in its last year of existence if the pro-business and libertarian wings of the party defect en masse to Obama. Many critics mention Obama's anti-NAFTA rhetoric but it must be kept in mind that he is a Democrat and must appeal to precisely the people who believe they have lost their jobs to NAFTA. And yet Hillary Clinton, wife of the man who signed NAFTA into law, has won the votes of the white working class. Michigan? Ohio? Pennsylvania? As shown by the Democratic primaries, Obama needs the votes of the NAFTA-haters to win the White House. However, if Obama wants to revive the economy and deliver on his promise of change, he will have to embrace more conservative economic policies instead of the protectionism that he has espoused during the campaign.

One thing that has rarely been mentioned, even by the Clinton campaign, is the economic prosperity of the 1990's. Much of the credit for the '90s boom goes to Bill Clinton's NAFTA and that decade's globalization. However, in today's turbulent times, especially in industrial states, much of the electorate blames the nation's economic woes on free trade. McCain admirably took the path of telling industrial state voters that their jobs aren't coming back, and he has paid the political price for it. Obama has railed against NAFTA during the campaign but Obama has shown a willingness to listen to his advisers that is lacking in the stubborn Republican John McCain. His economic team is composed of highly competent economists such as chief advisor Austan Goolsbee and former Fed chief Paul Volcker, as well as business leaders such as investment titan Warren Buffet. Surely these men experienced in the business world will whisper to Obama to perhaps discard the Democratic tradition of protectionism and borrow a page from the last Democratic administration's economic playbook.

As a pro-business liberal myself, I look forward to the fall defection of like-minded socially liberal professionals trapped in the Republican party only because of its business-friendly policies. Hopefully, pragmatism will win out over populism in the Obama administration.