OBAMA: palling around with Republicans & foreign policy establishment

Gen. Colin Powell (ret.) is African-American, but race and partisan affiliation are not the only thing that influences his candidate choices. No, it is not incongruous that Powell is a Republican and is supporting Obama. The fact that other Republicans have also endorsed Obama should give pause to the arguments that only attribute Powell's endorsement to shared racial identity.

Oh, right-wing wingnuts,
you've got it wrong with the place of Sen. Barack Obama in his web of connections.
Obama: palling around with Republicans.

Let's look at the Republican support Obama enjoys, aside from Colin Powell:
John B. Anderson, the Illinois Republican congressman that ran for president as an independent in 1980. Former senators that entered the senate as Republicans: Lowell Weicker Jr. (Conn.), Lincoln Chafee (R.I.)
Former Congressmen that entered the House as Republicans: Jim Leach (Iowa), Pete McCloskey (Cal.)
----and Colin Powell, career-long Republican, who referred to the Republican Party yesterday as "my party"

Obama: palling around the the military and foreign policy establishment.

Powell is an African-American, but we don't only see him as an African-American. He is part of the military and foreign policy establishment. As the following people have endorsed Obama, we can say that these military and foreign policy establishment folks pall around with Obama ... they meet with and consult him ... :
Madeline Albright (former Ambassador to the United Nations, former Secretary of State), Zbignew Brezinkski (former National Security Advisor), Wesley Clark, Anthony Lake (former National Security Advisor), Donald McHenry (former Ambassador to the United Nations), Sam Nunn (former Chair of Senate Armed Services Committee), Bill Richardson (former Ambassador to the United Nations); and
Deputy Undersecretaries of Defense, Secretaries of the Navy and Air Force, a Vice Chief of Staff of Air Force, and high-ranking Army generals.

----and Colin Powell, former National Security Advisor, former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former Secretary of State

NO, PUNDITS, IT IS NOT RACE THAT DROVE POWELL'S ENDORSEMENT. No one charged the above-cited individuals with racial solidarity in their endorsements; we sense an ugly double standard here, in the opposition to Powell's endorsement, by way of asserting racial solidarity as the basis for the endorsement.