WASHINGTON (IPS) – The announcement by former Secretary of State Colin Powell Sunday that he will vote for Democratic Sen. Barack Obama for president Nov. 4 marks the latest and most prominent, if not entirely unexpected, defection of a major Republican figure from his party’s election campaign.

Former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell speaks during a taping of “Meet the Press” at NBC Sunday Oct. 19, 2008, in Washington. Powell, a Republican who was President Bush’s first secretary of state, endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president Sunday, and criticized the tone of Republican John McCain’s campaign.

Powell, who made his announcement on the widely viewed “Meet the Press” public-affairs television program, cited a number of factors for his decision not to back his old friend, Sen. John McCain, to whose campaign he had contributed money during the Republican primary contest earlier this year.
But he stressed that Obama, whom he called a “transformational figure,” would offer a badly needed “new image of America’s role in the world” and pursue policies, notably a willingness to engage antagonists as well as allies, that have been denounced by McCain and shunned by the administration of President George W. Bush.

“…I think the president has to reach out to the world and show that there is a new president, a new administration that is looking forward to working with our friends and allies, and, in my judgement, also willing to talk to people who we have not been willing to talk to before,” Powell, a retired four-star general who served as chairman of the Armed Forces Chief of Staff under Bush’s father, said. “Because this is a time for outreach.”

“…I strongly believe that at this point in America’s history, we need a president that will not just continue – even with a new face and with some changes and with some maverick aspects – the policies that we have been following in recent years,” he added in an implicit challenge to McCain’s efforts to distance himself from the highly unpopular Bush.

Powell’s backing for Obama is the latest in a series of defections by Republicans, particularly those who hail from the diminishing “moderate” wing of the party that included Bush’s father and stretches back to former President Dwight Eisenhower, like Powell, another four-star general. The defections have been centered primarily in the industrial northeast and upper Midwestern states.

Indeed, Eisenhower’s granddaughter, Susan, was a founding member of a group of prominent Republicans that also included New York lawyer Rita Hauser, former Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee, and former long-time Iowa Rep. Jim Leach, and gave one of the nominating speeches for Obama at the Democratic convention in Denver in August.

“Hijacked by a relatively small few, the [Republican Party] of today bears no resemblance to Lincoln, [Theodore] Roosevelt or Eisenhower’s party, or many of the other Republican administrations that came after,” Eisenhower, a foreign policy expert in her own right, wrote last August in the National Interest, a publication of the Nixon Center, a foreign policy think tank named for former President Richard Nixon.

In fact, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Nixon’s daughter, who married Eisenhower’s grandson, has also endorsed Obama.

Since the Republican convention in early September – and particularly with the nomination of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be McCain’s vice presidential candidate – the ranks of prominent Republicans who have either endorsed Obama or distanced themselves from their party’s ticket have grown significantly, even while only about five percent of self-identified Republicans at the grassroots have told pollsters they won’t support McCain.

In the past week, the Chicago Tribune, which not only had supported McCain during the Republican primary campaign, but had also not endorsed a Democratic presidential candidate in 161 years, came out for Obama.

Like Powell, the Tribune, which also owns the Los Angeles Times, noted the choice of Palin among other reasons for its decision. “McCain put his campaign before his country.”

Palin’s presence on the ticket has also been cited by a number of other prominent Republicans as a major obstacle to their support for McCain.

“Sorry, Dad, I’m voting for Obama,” wrote Christopher Buckley, son of the late conservative thinker and founder of the highly influential National Review William F. Buckley, on “The Daily Beast” blog last week. Like Powell, he also expressed great disappointment with the “mean-spirited and pointless” attacks the McCain campaign has mounted against Obama in its campaign. About Palin’s nomination, Buckley asked, “What on earth can he have been thinking?”

Those tactics and Palin’s nomination have also provoked strong complaints – if not yet Obama endorsements – from other prominent figures on the right, including conservative nationally syndicated columnist George Will and even some of his neo-conservative colleagues, such as the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer, former Bush speechwriter David Frum, and the New York Times’ David Brooks, who called Palin and her far-right populism a “cancer on the Republican Party.”

Allan Gerson, who served as a top aide to neo-con icon Jeane Kirkpatrick and authored a memoir of her years as Reagan’s ambassador to the U.N., wrote last week that his former boss would probably have backed Obama despite her longstanding friendship with McCain, both because of Palin’s selection and because of his readiness to resort to force and “proclivity to the intemperate,” as most recently illustrated by his repeated denunciation of the Russian intervention in Georgia as “aggression.”

While no sitting Republican lawmakers have endorsed Obama, at least two influential members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and the Committee’s vice chairman, Richard Lugar of Indiana – have repeatedly expressed agreement with his views on the importance of engaging foreign foes diplomatically.

In a speech to the National Defense University last week, Lugar praised Obama for “correctly caution(ing) against the implication that hostile nations must be dealt with almost exclusively through isolation or military force. In some cases, refusing to talk can even be dangerous.”

A Vietnam veteran and foreign policy realist like Powell, Hagel, whose wife has publicly endorsed Obama, has also repeatedly spoken out in favor of engagement, and some analysts here believe he may yet appear on Obama’s shortlist for secretary of state.

Meanwhile, Powell’s former boss and uber realist ret. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who served two Republican presidents – Bush Sr. and Gerald Ford – as national security adviser, has declined to endorse either candidate. However, he has been speaking out in favor of unconditional talks with Iran – a stance until recently mocked as “naïve” by McCain – for several years. Reagan’s former secretary of state and long-time Republican, George Shultz, has also remained silent.

Such defections or distancing may, as the polls indicate, have only a marginal effect on grassroots Republican voters, but are likely to weigh more heavily with the all-important independents, who make up the vast majority of the roughly 10 percent of voters who have not yet made up their minds, according to political analysts.

That may be particularly true in Powell’s case, given his virtually unparalleled national security experience both in the military and in civilian posts. ‘Powell is a glass of warm milk and a cookie for those who can’t sleep worrying about the lack of experience of a President Obama,’ Alex Castellanos, a Republican strategist, told the New York Times.

Powell’s endorsement could also have an impact in key southern states – notably Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida – with large military populations, according to Chris Nelson, publisher of the insider “Nelson Report.”