Joe Hallett of The Columbus Dispatch reports that Ohio Senator George Voinovich recently approached former Secretary of State Colin Powell and tried to get him to run for the GOP’s nomination.
Sen. George V. Voinovich visited former Secretary of State Colin Powell about a month ago and urged him to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2008.
Powell, who resigned after President Bush’s first term, balked.
“He said he had given his service to this country, and his wife’s a little bit reluctant about doing it,” Voinovich, an Ohio Republican, said Wednesday during an interview in his Capitol Hill office.
“I told him it’s time to re-up.”
Voinovich, who is given to public displays of emotion, then paused and got teary-eyed as he continued speaking about Powell.
“I said, ‘You have a moral obligation and I have a moral obligation, and this country is running out of time. And if you’re running out of time, then I’m running out of time, and I think we have a moral obligation to try to leave a better legacy than it looks like we’re going to leave to our kids.’ ” [Emphasis added]
Voinovich’s concern about how he and Powell’s rubber stamping of the Bush administration’s failures in Iraq and Afghanistan will reflect on their personal legacies is truly touching [/ world's smallest violin]. I agree that he and Powell do have a moral obligation to leave a better legacy for America than the string of failures via lack of principle in their opposition to the disasters their party has brought America to. Barring any of Powell’s actions during tenure as Bush’s Secretary of State who sold the Iraq War to the world, he might even make a better candidate than the dozen-odd hacks and has-beens that make up the Republican field now.
But Voinovich and Powell are deluding themselves if they think now’s the time for Powell to save his legacy and fix the problems facing America and the Republican Party stemming from Iraq and Bush’s war on terror. Powell owns these failures just as much as Condi Rice, George Tenet, Don Rumsfeld, and the raft of other neocon administration officials. It’s not exactly a prime platform for saving your reputation by launching a presidential campaign.
I don’t know if Powell will do well as a candidate. He once noted, though, that he was picked to sell the war because the only person who polls higher than him in America is Mother Teresa. So who knows. I just don’t relish the thought of this man trying to make himself into a saint to save America from a problem that he helped create.
5 Responses to “Voinovich Pushing Powell to Run”
What’s with all of the Republican he man crybabies? Geez, first Ted Stevens breaks down in tears, the nutjob in Utah blubbers like a baby because Satan is allowing Marxist Mexicans to illegaly immigrate, the guy in this story and a few others I can’t think of right now.
I bet matt cries a lot, too.
yea there is not place for ANOTHER african american candidate acting as the saint who can unite and inspire us all.
I’ll just let that marinate for a minute.
maybe if colin had less experience and a better smile he could get oprah’s endorsement, but as of now the libs have the ‘messiah’ candidate all rapped up, sorry powell.
Something to say?
yea there is not place for ANOTHER african american candidate acting as the saint who can unite and inspire us all. sorry colin, but the dems have the patent on the “messiah” candidate with barrack hussein, you will just have to run as the guy with more eperience in his pinky finger then the whole democrat field.
hacks and hasbeens on the republican side? good to see this site is still “covering” the primary with its usual distastful smears. well 2 of the hacks(rudy & mccain) still beat the entire liberal field in every head to head match up.
powell is just another in a long line of republicans who seem far more presidential then what the democrats have put on the table.
as for the rubber stamping, i really wish senators clinton, kerry, and edwards hadn’t given the president the rubber stamp either. but hey, the war was polling well at the time, so of course the dems were on board. now it doesnt poll so well, and look who jumped off the bandwagon. libs are so predictable, you could set your watch to their flip flops.
Left by matt
May 8, 2007 at 2:13pm