GOP: crumbling from the center

To recap, let us note all of the Republicans who are now defecting from the John McCain/Rick Davis/Sarah Palin GOP:

Colin Powell - retired US Army General and fmr. Secretary of State

Ken Adelman - conservative Republican and original neo-con

Mickey Edwards - Fmr. Oklahoma Congressman and founding member of the Heritage Foundation

Christopher Buckley - National Review contributer, author, son of the late Wm. F. Buckley

Peggy Noonan - Fmr. Reagan speechwriter, author, and conservative columnist

George Will - conservative columnist

David Brooks - conservative columnist

Michael Smerconish - conservative talk-show host and author

I have to say, one thing I love about Peggy Noonan is that she speaks EXACTLY as she writes.  Its just archaic and wonderful.

Granted, McCain and Davis would write all of this off as the treachery of the irrelevant Georgetown cocktail circuit, but that may be even more evidence of how these people are narrowing the party.

Thoughts on the Powell endorsement

No doubt - NO doubt - you've heard plenty by now about Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama, but let me point out one thing about that endorsement that you may not have heard about if you didn't see it live.

Mr. Powell made a very lovely point that I think its important for all of us to consider.  It was about the whisper campaign that Barack Obama is "really a Muslim" or a "secret Muslim" or just outright "Muslim" as an email I received stated.  Powell said this:

I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." 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 seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?  [my emphasis]

Just give that some thought and remember what is good about America.  You can watch Powell's endorsement in its entirety here.

GOP voter registration fraud. Yes, GOP voter registration fraud

Well, if you thought ACORN had cornered the market on voter registration fraud, get some bi-partisan religion.  

In a great story followed by the LA Times, Mark Jacoby, owner of a firm that the California Republican Party hired this year to register thousand of voters, was arrested over the weekend on suspicion of voter registration fraud.  Turns out Mr. Jacoby falsely registered himself at a California address that is not his own in order to meet California's legal requirement to register others to vote.

THIS AFTER dozens of California voters came forward to report that his firm, YPM, had duped them into registering Republican by asking them to sign a petition for "tougher penalties against child molesters".  According to the Times, "YPM has been accused of using bait-and-switch tactics across the country.  Election officials and lawmakers have launched investigations into the activities of YPM workers in Florida and Massachusettes.  In Arizona, the firm was recently a defendant in a civil rights lawsuit."

In California, if these voters didn't discover the change, they would be disqualified from voting in their party's next primary.

So, I know they're both bad, but indulge me: which is worse?  Filling out a bunch of obviously false registration cards (Tony Romo, Mickey Mouse, Jimmy John, etc.) or duping an actual person into changing their party affiliation?

PS - Unlike ACORN, YPM does pay by the card, not by the hour.

(Tip of the hat to Rob for this one.)