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From the Nation:

Even Republicans Fear Bush
10/31/2004 @ 10:01am  
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The most divisive election campaign in recent American history has not
merely split the nation along party lines, it has split the Grand Old
Party itself. Unfortunately, most Americans are wholly unaware of the
loud dissents against Bush that have begun to be heard in Republican
circles.

If the United States had major media that covered politics, as opposed
to the political spin generated by the Bush White House and the
official campaigns of both the Republican president and his Democratic
challenger, one of the most fascinating, and significant, stories of
the 2004 election season would be the abandonment of the Bush
reelection effort by senior Republicans. But this is a story that, for
the most part, has gone untold. Scant attention was paid to the
revelation that one Republican member of the US Senate, Rhode Island's
Lincoln Chafee, will refrain from voting for his party's president --
despite the fact that Chafee offered a far more thoughtful critique of
George W. Bush's presidency than "Zig-Zag" Zell Miller, the frothing,
Democrat-hating Democrat did when he condemned his party's nominee.
Beyond the minimal attention to Chafee, most media has neglected the
powerful, and often poignant, condemnations of Bush by prominent
Republicans.

Former Republican members of the US Senate and House, governors,
ambassadors, aides to GOP Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan
and George Herbert Walker Bush have explicitly endorsed the campaign
of Democrat John Kerry. For many of these lifelong Republicans, their
vote for Kerry will be a first Democratic vote. But, in most cases, it
will not be a hesitant one.

Angered by the Bush administration's mismanagement of the war in Iraq,
record deficits, assaults on the environment and secrecy, the renegade
partisans tend to echo the words of former Minnesota Governor Elmer
Andersen, who says that, "Although I am a longtime Republican, it is
time to make a statement, and it is this: Vote for Kerry-Edwards, I
implore you, on November 2."

Many of the Republicans who are abandoning Bush express sorrow at what
the Bush-Cheney administration and its allies in Congress have done to
their party: "The fact is that today's 'Republican' Party is one that
I am totally unfamiliar with," writes John Eisenhower. But the deeper
motivation is summed up by former US Senator Marlow Cook, a Kentucky
Republican, who explained in a recent article for the Louisville
Courier-Journal newspaper that, "For me, as a Republican, I feel that
when my party gives me a dangerous leader who flouts the truth, takes
the country into an undeclared war and then adds a war on terrorism to
it without debate by the Congress, we have a duty to rid ourselves of
those who are taking our country on a perilous ride in the wrong
direction. If we are indeed the party of Lincoln (I paraphrase his
words), a president who deems to have the right to declare war at will
without the consent of the Congress is a president who far exceeds his
power under our Constitution. I will take John Kerry for four years to
put our country on the right path."

In the end, of course, the vast majority of Republicans will cast
their ballots for George W. Bush on Tuesday, just as the vast majority
of Democrats will vote for John Kerry. But the Republicans who plan to
cross the partisan divide and vote for Kerry have articulated a unique
and politically potent indictment of the Bush Administration.

Here are a dozen examples of what Republicans are saying about George
W. Bush--and John Kerry--as the November 2 election approaches:

"As son of a Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is
automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years,
through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration's
decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter
registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen
development, I intend to vote for the Democratic presidential
candidate, Sen. John Kerry."

-- Ambassador John Eisenhower, endorsing Kerry in an opinion piece
published in The Manchester Union Leader, September 28, 2004.

"The two 'Say No to Bush' signs in my yard say it all. The present
Republican president has led us into an unjustified war -- based on
misguided and blatantly false misrepresentations of the threat of
weapons of mass destruction. The terror seat was Afghanistan. Iraq had
no connection to these acts of terror and was not a serious threat to
the United States, as this president claimed, and there was no
relation, it's now obvious, to any serious weaponry. Although Saddam
Hussein is a frightful tyrant, he posed no threat to the United States
when we entered the war. George W. Bush's arrogant actions to jump
into Iraq when he had no plan how to get out have alienated the United
States from our most trusted allies and weakened us immeasurably
around the world... This imperialistic, stubborn adherence to wrongful
policies and known untruths by the Cheney-Bush administration -- and
that's the accurate order -- has simply become more than I can stand."

-- Former Minnesota Governor Elmer Andersen, a Republican, endorsing
Kerry in an opinion piece published in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune,
October 13, 2004. Andersen argued in the piece that, "I am more
fearful for the state of this nation than I have ever been -- because
this country is in the hands of an evil man: Dick Cheney. It is
eminently clear that it is he who is running the country, not George
W. Bush."

"I am not enamored with John Kerry, but I am frightened to death of
George Bush. I fear a secret government. I abhor a government that
refuses to supply the Congress with requested information. I am
against a government that refuses to tell the country with whom the
leaders of our country sat down and determined our energy policy, and
to prove how much they want to keep the secret, they took it all the
way to the Supreme Court."

-- Former US Senator Marlow Cook, Republican from Kentucky, endorsing
Kerry in an opinion piece that appeared in The Louisville
Courier-Journal, October 20, 2004.

"My Republican Party is the party of Theodore Roosevelt, who fought to
preserve our natural resources and environment. This president has
pursued policies that will cause irreparable damage to our
environmental laws that protect the air we breathe, the water we drink
and the public lands we share with future generations."

-- Former Michigan Governor William Milliken, from a statement
published in the Traverse City Record Eagle, October 17, 2004.

"As an environmentalist who served as chairman of the US Senate
Committee on Environment and Public Works, I know that this
administration has turned environmental policy over to lobbyists for
the oil, gas and mining interests. On the other hand, I know
first-hand of your commitment to a more balanced approach to
environmental policy -- one where we can have both jobs and profit for
industry as well as clean air and water. There is no stronger evidence
of this than your outstanding leadership and support in the
restoration of the Florida Everglades. John, for each of these reasons
I believe President Bush has failed our country and my party.
Accordingly, I want you to know that when I go into the booth next
Tuesday I am going to cast my vote for you."

-- Former US Senator Bob Smith, Republican from New Hampshire, from an
endorsement letter sent to John Kerry, October 28, 2004.

"Nixon was a prince compared to these guys." 

-- Former US Representative Pete McCloskey, R-California, from an
article in the Palo Alto Weekly, September 8, 2004. McCloskey, who is
active with Republicans for Kerry, says of members of the Bush
administration, "These people believe God has told them what to do.
They've high jacked the Republican Party we once knew."

"The war is just a misbegotten thing that's spiraling down. It's a
matter of conscience for me. After 9/11, the whole world was behind
us. That's all gone now. That's been squandered. Now we've made the
entire Muslim world hate us. And for what? For what?"

-- Former State Senator Al Meiklejohn, Republican from Colorado and
World War II combat veteran, explaining his decision to support John
Kerry in an interview with The Denver Post, September 19, 2004.

"We need a leader who is really dedicated to creating millions of
high-paying jobs all across the country."

-- Former Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca, who campaigned for George W.
Bush in 2000 and appeared in television advertisements for the
Republican Party of Michigan that year. Iacocca, who complains that
under Bush deficit spending is "getting out of hand," endorsing Kerry
on June 24, 2004.

"In a dangerous epoch -- made more so by a president who sees the
world in stark black and white because simplicity polls better and
fits into sound bites -- John Kerry may seem out of place. He is, in
fact, in exactly the right place at the right time to lead our
country."

-- Tim Ashby, who served during the Reagan and George Herbert Walker
Bush administrations as director of the Office of Mexico and the
Caribbean for the US Commerce Department and acting deputy assistant
Secretary of Commerce for the Western Hemisphere, endorsing Kerry in a
Seattle Times, October 14, 2004.

"I have always been, and I still am, a registered Republican, but I
shall enthusiastically vote for John Kerry for president on November
2... If the Bush administration stays in power four more years, it
will pack the Supreme Court with neocons who reject the idea that the
Constitution is a living document designed to protect the freedom of
the citizens."

-- Anne Morton Kimberly, widow of former Republican National Committee
chair Rogers C.B. Morton, Secretary of the Interior during the Nixon
administration and Secretary of Commerce during the Ford
administration, endorsing Kerry in a an opinion piece that appeared in
the Louisville Courier-Journal, October 14, 2004.

"Mainstream Republicans believe in fiscal responsibility,
internationalism, environmental protection, the rights of women, and
putting middle-class families ahead of big business lobbyists.
Moderate Republicans should not be asked to swallow the right-wing
policies of George W. Bush."

-- Clay Myers, who was Oregon's Republican Secretary of State for 10
years and the state's Treasure, endorsing Kerry at a press conference
for Oregon Republicans for Kerry, September 1, 2004.

"The current administration has run the largest deficits in U.S.
history, incurring massive debts that our children and grandchildren
will have to pay. Two and a half million people have lost their jobs;
trillions have been wiped out of savings and retirement accounts. The
income of Americans has declined two years in a row, the first time
since the IRS began keeping records. George W. Bush will be the first
president since Hoover to have a net job loss under his watch...
President Bush wanted to be judged as the CEO president, it is time to
say, 'you have failed, and you're fired."

-- William Rutherford, former State Treasurer of Oregon, endorsing
Kerry as a press conference for Oregon Republicans for Kerry,
September 1, 2004.

"I served 20 years in the Ohio General Assembly as Republican. People
have asked me why I oppose George W. Bush for president. My first
response is, 'He is incompetent.' His behavior, his bad judgment, his
record, all demonstrate a failure as president. He certainly misled
the country into a no-win war in Iraq. Following his preemptive
invasion, he totally misjudged the consequences of his action. He made
a bad situation worse, fomenting widespread terrorism, all done with a
frightful loss of lives and money."

-- Former Ohio State Representative John Galbraith, a Republican
legislator for 20 years, endorsing Kerry in a letter to The Toledo
Blade, September 28, 2004.

"Before the current campaign, it might have been argued that at least
in affirming the importance of faith and respecting those who profess
it the administration had embraced traditional conservative views. But
in the wake of the Swift Boat ads attacking John Kerry, even this
argument can no longer be maintained. As an elder of the Presbyterian
Church, I found that those ads were not at all in the Christian
tradition. John McCain rightly condemned them as dishonest and
dishonorable. The president should have, too. That he did not
undermines his credibility on questions of faith.

Some say it's just politics. But that's the whole point. More is
expected of people of faith than "just politics."

The fact is that the Bush administration might better be called
radical or romantic or adventurist than conservative. And that's why
real conservatives are leaning toward Kerry."

-- Clyde Prestowitz, counselor to the secretary of commerce in the
Reagan administration and an elder of the Presbyterian Church, from
"The Conservative Case for Kerry," published in the Providence Journal
and other newspapers, October 15, 2004.