Good morning, gentle people – back to light duty, so a relatively short “Obsession” today.
Since it is Memorial Day, let’s lead off with the Freeperatis’ salute to the troops they so profess to love.
Soldiers? RINOS!!!!
Veterans Favor Obama Over Romney – They’re Sick of War
The Auburn Journal ^| May 13, 2012 | “Over_L”Posted on Monday, May 14, 2012 8:38:42 AM by Colonel Kangaroo
YAY! The good Captain got a promotion!
(In related news, Mr. Green Jeans is now Corporal Green Jeans)
According to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, veterans favor Obama over Romney by as much as seven percentage points. They favor cutting the defense budget. Read more…
COLUMBIA, South Carolina (Reuters) – Mack McDowell likes to spend time at the local knife and gun show “drooling over firearms,” as he puts it. Retired after 30 years in the U.S. Army, he has lined his study with books on war, framed battalion patches from his tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, a John Wayne poster, and an 1861 Springfield rifle from an ancestor who fought in the Civil War.
But when it comes to the 2012 presidential election, Master Sergeant McDowell is no hawk.
In South Carolina’s January primary, the one-time Reagan supporter voted for Ron Paul “because of his unchanging stand against overseas involvement.” In November, McDowell plans to vote for the candidate least likely to wage “knee-jerk reaction wars.”
Disaffection with the politics of shock and awe runs deep among men and women who have served in the military during the past decade of conflict. Only 32 percent think the war in Iraq ended successfully, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. And far more of them would pull out of Afghanistan than continue military operations there.
While the 2012 campaign today is dominated by economic and domestic issues, military concerns could easily jump to the fore. Nearly 90,000 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan. Israeli politicians and their U.S. supporters debate over whether to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities as partisans bicker over proposed Pentagon budget cuts.
Mitt Romney has accused President Obama of “a dangerous course” in wanting to cut $1 trillion from the defense budget – although the administration’s actual proposal is a reduction of $487 billion over the next decade.
“We should not negotiate with the Taliban,” the former Massachusetts governor contends. “We should defeat the Taliban.” He has blamed Obama for “procrastination toward Iran” and advocates arming Syrian rebels.
Romney, along with his primary rivals Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, had also accused Obama of “appeasement” toward U.S. enemies – a charge that drew a sharp Obama rebuttal. “Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al-Qaeda leaders who’ve been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement,” the president shot back. He has reproached GOP candidates: “Now is not the time for bluster.”
If the election were held today, Obama would win the veteran vote by as much as seven points over Romney, higher than his margin in the general population.
FADING COOL FACTOR
The GOP’s heated rhetoric, aimed at the party’s traditional hawks, might be expected to resonate with veterans. Yet in interviews in South Carolina, a military-friendly red state, many former soldiers expressed anger at the toll of a decade of war, questioned the legitimacy of George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion, and worried that the surge in Afghanistan won’t make a difference in the long run.
“We looked real cool going into Iraq waving our guns,” said McDowell, 50, who retired from the 82d Airborne Division in November with a Legion of Merit and two Bronze Stars. “But people lost their lives, and it made no sense.”
Now he worries. “I really don’t like the direction we are going, how we seem to come closer daily towards a war with Iran.”
In Columbia, where McDowell lives in a leafy subdivision, the streets are named for American Revolutionary war heroes, and the Confederate battle flag still flies on the capitol grounds. Pizza parlors offer a 10 percent discount to uniformed soldiers from nearby Fort Jackson, one of eight military bases that pump $13 billion a year into the state’s economy.
In exit polls, a quarter of voters in January’s primary identified themselves as veterans.
Among them were Karen and Kelly Grafton, devout Southern Baptists who live in the small town of Prosperity, outside Columbia, and spend their vacations at Nascar races. They voted for Santorum.
“He just came off a little bit better than the others,” said Karen Grafton, 51, a real estate agent who served 20 years in the Air Force. “He stuck to his story about what he has done and what he will do.”
The Graftons’ votes, however, like many veterans’, can’t be taken as evidence of a hard-line military stance. Registered Republicans, they cast their ballots for Obama in 2008 because he promised to bring the troops home from Iraq.
“I went to war for George Bush,” said Grafton, 48, a retired Army master sergeant who served in special operations units in Somalia and Iraq. “But we can’t keep policing the world.”
Karen Grafton, a retired Air Force recruiter, said she’ll be “glad when we’re out of Afghanistan.” The military budget? “I’m sure it can be cut,” she said. “Everyone has to make concessions.” Still, many former soldiers worry that Pentagon cuts could mean stingier salaries, pensions, and education and housing benefits.
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I can’t believe that there is any great enthusiasm among our military for Obama on his own merits. But there may be evidence that the strain of a decade of war is being felt by an undermanned military.And some may view the amateur Obama’s shaky level of competence to be safer than some of Romney’s connections to some of the more bellicose foreign policy elements from the George W. Bush admistration.1 posted on Monday, May 14, 2012 8:38:48 AM by Colonel Kangaroo
To: Colonel KangarooWhat an absolute crock
What’s a “crock”?The Stars And Stripes? The poll?The interviewees, who said they’ve had enough of you keyboard kommandos’ prediliction for sending them out to die and get maimed to make the world safe for Sharia?
2 posted on Monday, May 14, 2012 8:42:42 AM by clamper1797 (Hoping to have some change left)
To: Colonel KangarooThis is bull!. There is no way Veterans or Active Duty Military will vote for Obama. Many retired military people like myself are disenvhanted with the war in Afghanistan, but that doesn’t translate into a vote for Obama. Obama and the Democrats would “Gut” the military if they have their way. Veterans and Active Military aare for the most part conservatives and they will never vote for Obama.
5 posted on Monday, May 14, 2012 8:46:38 AM by Old Retired Army Guy
To: Colonel KangarooThe veterans I know don’t favor Obama at all.
60 posted on Monday, May 14, 2012 10:21:15 AM by rangerwife (Proud wife of a Purple Heart Recipient)
To: Colonel KangarooMy gut reaction is to call BS on this story but I’m not so sure I will. In 2008 there were polls saying that retired military and active duty wifes in the Tidewater VA area were going for obama in big numbers and I sais BS. But then obama won Virginia, he won Tidewater and he did what no democrat had done since Jimmy Carter…he won VA Beach. And he won VA Beach with the help of military spouses who were sick and tired of the war and the multiple tours of duty.
To: Da CoyoteI hope you guys are right but I live near Ft Hood and it’s very surprising how many Obama stickers I see on cars here. Not so much on soldiers cars but their family members. When you drive through neighborhoods you see them in the driveway.A huge percent of the Army is African American and many Puerta(sic) Rican.
To: Colonel KangarooMembers of the 1st Transvestite diversionary farce all agree.
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Reagan never raised taxes. And facts are stupid things.
Yay! Tommy’s back! You were missed. Hope you’re mending well.
And the Freepathon is up to 95% of the (currently stable) goal of $88,000. Only $4,242 to go before the end of June and I win my bet that the endless Freepathon has not yet come.
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Re that tagline: That’s because you refuse to learn from History. The rest of us? We learn.
Oddly enough, I find myself agreeing with another Freepus. I’ve been finding it harder and harder to distinguish between South Freepistan and the Onion. On the other hand, from the tagline, I suspect this is another infiltrator.
I thought that was what caused santorum.
–Kibitzer
The consensus among MY veteran friends is that the officer corps leans way more right than the enlisted. Being in or retired from the military has no bearing on how I see things, having a brain and a heart does.
Glad you are back again Tommy, hope you are doing well.