Glenn Greenwald on Colin Powell

From today's posting at Salon:

Greenwald: The core of the Republican Party has degenerated into the unrestrained id of its worst impulses, and it was good to see Powell specifically cite (and condemn) those elements as a principal reason why he is turning away from the party he has served for so long, and instead supporting the Democratic nominee.

If for instance John McCain's poll numbers were even with Obama's poll numbers right now or, heaven forbid, even higher than Obama's poll numbers, would Colin Powell be making this Obama endorsement as it were? Somehow I rather doubt it because the Bush and Cheney's campaigns were always ugly campaigns too. I never noticed that Colin Powell had a problem with the Bush/Cheney and Karl Rove tactics the entire time he work for them. Nobody can sit here and tell me Bush and Karl Rove were nice guys and clearly John McCain got all his plays right out of Karl Rove's playbook. So now we see Colin Powell parading himself about as the Christian Republican doing the right thing, but of course, doing the right thing was something Powell should have done way back when Hans Blix couldn't find one single credible piece of evidence from Colin Powell's UN PowerPoint Show in the lead up to the War in Iraq. The righteous Christian Colin Powell just sat there and let Bush trash Hans Blix and the entire UN Assembly for not going along with the Administration's lies about WMD in Iraq.

Is it that Colin Powell doesn't know how to be a decent man, nor any other Republican until a majority of Americans tell them how to be one? If ex-Nixon Administration Counsel John Dean knew that Bush was worse than Nixon, why didn't other Republicans care about these obvious facts too? John McCain is not doing anything that the Bush Administration is not telling him to do and I am not about to sit here pretend otherwise. Is Colin Powell planning on praising Bush and Cheney's Administration after John McCain's campaign fails on November 4th? I bet Colin Powell does exactly that.

Update: Jonathan Martin's Blog at Politico:

But one prominent ally of McCain voiced what is on the minds of many GOP loyalists after watching Powell this morning. . . . . ."

". . . . . .Further, this Republican said, for all the former secretary of state's criticism of McCain and his praise of Obama, the move had less to do with the two candidates for president than the current occupant of the Oval Office. "Powell cares a lot about his reputation with Washington elites, and he thinks he was badly damaged by his relationship with the Bush administration," said the source. "So this is a way to make up for what he regarded as not being treated well by the Bush administration, not being given the due deference he thinks he deserves."

Really? What Washington elites, at least on the Republican side of elitism in DC, have not always back Bush? Why is Colin Powell suddenly playing the good Christian Republican political card here and now? Is it not to redeem little Bush and to salvage Junior's legacy that is ending down at 23% in the polls by rubbing it all off on the truly ugly McCain/Palin Campaign? Loyalist soldier Colin Powell has never, ever gone against Poppy Bush, and thus not his son either as Poppy would never hear of it, so Powell is not about to start doing it now either.