Candidate of the establishment

IT WAS a sharp rebuke of the McCain campaign--sharper, in many ways, than anything that has come out of the mouths of Barack Obama or Joe Biden.

But what's more, in endorsing Obama on the news show Meet the Press in October, former Bush administration Secretary of State and retired Gen. Colin Powell became the most visible of a series of establishment conservatives who are repudiating John McCain and the Republicans and supporting the Democrat in this presidential election.

Powell was unequivocally critical of the hysterical scare tactics of the McCain-Palin team. About the focus on Obama's association with ex-Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers, he said:

Mr. McCain says that [Ayers is] a washed-up terrorist, but then why do we keep talking about him? And why do we have the robocalls going on around the country trying to suggest that because of this very, very limited relationship that Senator Obama has had with Mr. Ayers, somehow Mr. Obama is tainted. What they're trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings.

Powell slammed the Republican operatives who contribute to the rumors that Obama is a Muslim--but in a way that went much further in challenging Islamophobia than Obama and his fellow Democrats typically do:

Well, the correct answer is: He is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is: What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?

The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, "He's a Muslim, and he might be associated with terrorists."

THE RESPONSE to Powell's endorsement by the right's loudest voices, like Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh, was predictable. "Entirely about race!" Limbaugh declared on his radio show.

But ranting won't hide the growing rift within the Republican Party--between Limbaugh-Buchanan social conservatives, corporate executives, conservative intellectuals and libertarians. Powell's comments represent the discontent among a wide section of Republicans with the voice of unreason in their party.

While the Republican right may be frightened by fantasies about the "terrorist sympathizer" and "socialist" Obama entering the White House, the business interests in the party are more scared by the disaster of the Bush presidency, and the inability or unwillingness of many Republican leaders to recognize failure and chart a new course.

As Lance Selfa wrote recently in his book The Democrats: A Critical History, "The ruling class of the world's largest and most technologically sophisticated economy is no longer wiling to invest millions in a party whose candidates kowtow to people who want to use the government to promote belief in creationism."

America's corporate and military elite sees its position in the world as weakened after eight years of George Bush in the White House.

Bush's war in Iraq was supposed to extend U.S. hegemony in the Middle East and domination over the world oil market. Instead, it has stretched the U.S. military to breaking point and left Washington's rivals--from Iran in the Middle East to China and Russia on the global scale--stronger. And now, in what may ultimately prove to be the more severe blow, Bush is responsible for presiding over the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Thus, to the rich, the Republican Party is looking like an even worse investment than mortgage-backed securities. Conservative columnist David Brooks described the extent to which big business money has left the Republican Party:

The Republicans have now alienated whole professions. Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4-to-1 rates. With doctors, it's 2-to-1. With tech executives, it's 5-to-1. With investment bankers, it's 2-to-1. It took talent for the Republican Party to lose the banking community.

At one point, it seemed like John McCain's victory in the primaries represented a new direction for the Republicans. McCain was viewed as a moderate within the party, with a record of standing up to the Bush administration on some issues, and opposing the Christian Right's more fanatical positions.

But then, McCain chose the Christian Right's favorite, Sarah Palin, as his running mate--in the hopes of rallying the Republican's hard-core base and building some enthusiasm for his campaign machine to rival Obama's army of volunteers.

The idea worked with the base--three-quarters of self-identified Republicans think Palin was a good choice--but at the cost of alienating support outside the party, and outraging establishment voices within it who thought at least a McCain ticket could at least claim to be more experienced.

This elite section of the Republican Party had no problem with social conservatives--like Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush or Dan Quayle--so long as they advanced the position of Corporate American and the U.S. empire. But following the self-destruction of the Bush presidency, even the establishment recognizes that elements of the right-wing agenda have to be junked.

Exploiting fear and suspicion on the Christian Right's hot-button issues, such as same-sex marriage, doesn't have the same appeal among a wider electorate that has grown more tolerant and liberal on these questions--and so it is losing its usefulness in rallying support for a pro-business agenda.

BUT THERE is another element to the splits that are fracturing the Republican Party--the way that the Democratic Party, led by Barack Obama, has made a bid for support from Wall Street and the political establishment.

Obama built an enthusiastic following based on his rhetoric about change, appealing to the bitterness that people feel toward the Bush presidency.

But Obama was always careful to suggest he would stop the "partisan battles" between the two parties. He has bragged for months about his Republican supporters, dubbed "Obamacans."

He staked out conservative ground on foreign policy issues--for example, giving a speech at the American-Israel Political Affairs Committee conference after clinching the nomination that took a position to the right of the Bush administration on Israel's war on the Palestinians. His choice of the ultimate political insider, Joe Biden, as a running mate was another gesture in the same direction.

And on economic issues, Obama was slower than his Democratic primary opponents, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, to embrace anything approaching populist proposals.

In other words, Obama has positioned the Democrats to be viewed as the more reliable manger of U.S. corporate and imperial interests than the out-of-control Republicans.

Anyone who thinks that Obama, once in the White House, will abandon this positioning should think again. He has made himself the candidate of the U.S. ruling establishment--and he is certain to act as the president of that establishment, unless he faces pressure from below.