Salon.com > Colin Powell

Can we forgive Bill Clinton for DOMA?

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 13:32:00 +0000

Bill Clinton’s op-ed in Friday’s Washington Post calling for the Defense of Marriage Act to be overturned is big news, but it’s hardly surprising. The former president, like a number of other leading political figures, has “evolved” on the issue in recent years, backing the push for gay marriage in New York in 2011 and pitching in to fight a North Carolina ballot initiative last year that amended the state constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and woman.

Still, for gay marriage backers, there’s a neat and necessary symmetry to Clinton’s latest pronouncement: With the Obama administration lending its support to a push to convince the Supreme Court to overturn DOMA, it’s helpful to have the guy who signed the law in the first place on board too.

Dick Cheney and Laura Bush plead support for marriage equality

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:47:00 +0000

Update: On Wednesday, Bush spokeswoman Anne MacDonald said Mrs. Bush "did not approve of her inclusion in this advertisement nor is she associated with the group that made the ad in any way" and that "we requested that the group remove her from it."

For an issue so heavily debated, so emotionally fraught, so politically polarizing, it turns out that same-sex marriage is shaping up to be one of the most unifying, bipartisan-friendly battles to come along in decades. And a new campaign is out to prove that equality isn't just for liberals.

It's hard to believe that just four short years ago, the idea of marriage equality in America was still so unusual, so outside the box, that its opponents were likening it to an angry weather system. Brrrrrrr … Scary!

The right’s Colin Powell freakout

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 00:04:00 +0000

The folks at FreedomWorks, last seen in the media being marched out of their own offices by an armed guard, only to march back in after a plutocrat benefactor paid an $8 million ransom to Dick Armey, found a black Republican to kick Gen. Colin Powell out of his own party Tuesday.

Happy birthday, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.!

Stacy Washington doesn’t seem to have brought along an armed guard to help her escort Powell out of his party. But apparently motivated by his majestic denunciation of his party’s four-year freakout over President Obama on “Meet the Press” last Sunday, Washington intoned on the front page of the FreedomWorks site Tuesday: “It's with considerable dismay that I pronounce him to be, well -- no longer a Republican!” Why? He “holds far too many positions that place him squarely in the Democratic Party's base to seriously be considered a Republican.”

In case you missed Powell’s remarks Sunday, he identified “a dark vein of intolerance in some parts” of his own party. He came with facts.

Sunday show roundup: Colin Powell on the GOP’s “dark vein of intolerance”

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 17:17:00 +0000

This week's Sunday shows continued to focus on the gun control debate, as well as Chuck Hagel's nomination to Defense secretary, with an aside from Colin Powell on racism. Here are the highlights:

- On racism:

Powell criticized Republicans for continuing to invoke racist tropes in attacks on President Obama. "There's also a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party," Powell said on "Meet the Press." "What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is they still sort of look down on minorities."

He cited Sarah Palin, for one: "When I see a former governor say that the president is 'shuckin' and jivin'.' That's a racial-era slave term." And John Sununu, a Mitt Romney surrogate during the campaign, for another. "[Sununu] didn't say [Obama] was slow, he was tired, he didn't do well; he said he was 'lazy,'" Powell said. "Now, it may not mean anything to most Americans, but to those of us who are African Americans, the second word is 'shiftless,' and then there's a third word that goes along with it."

Dumb tweet of the day: Colin Powell or Simon Cowell?

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 22:04:00 +0000

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Boehner holds on to speaker post

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 18:44:00 +0000

John Boehner squeaked by in a vote for speakership this afternoon, getting 220 votes of 426 cast, just a handful of votes over the number needed to hang on to his seat.

There were, however, a total of 14 defections from both Boehner, and Nancy Pelosi, who got 192 votes.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Va., got three votes. Reps. Louie Gohmert, Texas, and Paul Broun, Ga., both cast votes for ousted Rep. Allen West, Fla.

Tim Huelskamp, Kan., one of the four conservatives Boehner ousted from his committee spot, cast a vote for Jim Jordan, Ohio. Dave Schweikert, Ariz., another one of those conservatives, did support Boehner.

Both Michael Grimm and Peter King of New York, who had been at odds with Boehner over Hurricane Sandy relief funding, both voted for the speaker to keep his seat.

Is Obama failing the black community?

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 20:38:00 +0000

Are black elites and intellectuals cutting President Obama slack as the price we pay for having a black president? On Oct. 27, the New York Times ran an Op-Ed by Columbia University political science professor Fredrick C. Harris, author of "The Price of the Ticket: Barack Obama and Rise and Decline of Black Politics," saying that we are. He suggests that we are so grateful for this crumb of progress, we’re willing to sacrifice the greater good of the African-American community. While Harris outlines Obama’s significant accomplishments, he says that African-Americans have stagnated or declined socioeconomically in nearly every measurable way. He takes Obama to task for not explicitly addressing race often or vigorously enough.

I have to say: Harris’ thinking seems not much better than John Sununu suggesting Colin Powell endorsed Obama because they're both black; it’s a strange notion that political support should demand so little. And it's a problematic argument, that the decisions of black intellectuals and voters about whom we support and how, are always grounded in race. This implies that we consider race before we consider anything else. This implies that we think with the color of our skin and the cultures from which we rise and above all else, so desperate must we be for scraps from the political table.

Dumb tweet of the day: “Obummer”

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 20:44:00 +0000

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Sununu walks back comments about Powell and race

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 13:29:00 +0000

John Sununu is walking back his comment that Colin Powell only endorsed Barack Obama because they are both black.

Sununu, the former governor of New Hampshire and current campaign surrogate for Mitt Romney, told CNN's Piers Morgan last night: "Frankly, when you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to wonder if that's an endorsement based on issues, or whether he's got a slightly different reason for preferring President Obama."

When pressed, he elaborated: "Well, I think when you have somebody of your own race that you're proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him."

After the interview, Sununu put out the following statement, via National Review Online:

Colin Powell endorses Obama

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 13:39:00 +0000

Bush-era Secretary of State Colin Powell announced that he is endorsing Barack Obama for president again. “I voted for him in 2008, and I plan to stick with him in 2012,” Powell said on CBS’ "This Morning." “I’ll be voting for he and for Vice President Joe Biden next month.”

Of Romney, Powell said that his foreign policy positions are a "moving target."

“The governor who was speaking on Monday night at the debate was saying things that were quite different from what he said earlier,” he said.

“I’m not quite sure which Governor Romney we would be getting with respect to foreign policy,” Powell continued. “I don’t sense he’s thought through these issues as thoroughly as he should have. He gets advice from his campaign staff that he then has to modify as he goes along.”