Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama today underscores how clearly and irreparably John McCain has split open the fault line in the GOP.
In going against McCain, whom he has known and admired for two decades, the party’s keynote speaker in 2000 and former Bush Secretary of State cited Sarah Palin and the William Ayers tone of the Republican campaign and praised the “inclusive nature” of Obama’s as key reasons for his decision.
If, against all odds, McCain wins, traditional Republicans like Powell and those pillars of the GOP before the rise of the Religious Right and Karl Rove’s divisive tactics will be all but shut out.
If McCain loses, the struggle for the soul of a battered minority party will be ideologically fierce. The signs are already emerging:
*”In the end,” Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal, “the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It’s no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain, against his judgment and idealism.”