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Republican senators and governors, whohave endorsedKerry or refuse to vote for Bush.
A Elmer L. Andersen, former Republican Governo of Minnesota (1961-63) -- Oct. 13
· Tim Ashby, director, Office of Mexico and the Caribbean, U.S. Commerce Department under Reagan and Bush I -- Oct. 14
· Jack Bogle Founder of the Vanguard Mutual Fund.
· David Catania, Republican (now Independent) Councilman from Washington, D.C. -- Sept. 29
· Steve Chapman, conservative syndicated columnist, Chicago Tribune -- Oct. 24
· Mike Cobb, former Republican Mayor of Palo Alto, California -- Sept. 8
· George Comstock, Mayor of Portola Valley, California -- Sept. 1
· Marlow Cook, former Republican Senator from Kentucky (1968-74) -- Oct. 20
· Comer Cottrell, longtime Republican, Bush ally, and old baseball partner -- Oct. 28
· David Durenberger, former Senator from Minnesota (1978-95) -- Oct. 27 (endorsing Kerry health plan over Bush's)
· John Eisenhower, son of former Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower -- Sept. 9
· John A. Galbraith, former Republican Ohio General Assemblyman -- Sept. 28
· Peter Gillette, former Republican Commissioner of Trade for Minnesota (1991-95) -- Oct. 20
· Lee Iacocca, former Chrysler Chairman -- June 25
· Anne Morton Kimberly, widow of Rogers C.B. Morton, former Republican Representative from Maryland -- Oct. 14
· Steve May, former Republican state legislator from Arizona -- Sept. 10
· Pete McCloskey (editorial here), former Republican Representative from California -- Sept. 8
· Ballard Morton, son of Thruston Morton, former Republican Senator from Kentucky -- Oct. 14
· Clay Myers, Republican Secretary of State (1967-77) and State Treasurer (1977-84) for Oregon -- Sept. 1
· Clyde Prestowitz, counselor to Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Commerce -- Oct. 6
· Rick Russman, former Republican State Senator from New Hampshire -- Oct. 7
· William Milliken, former Republican Governor of Michigan (1969-82) -- Oct. 18
· Charley Reese, conservative columnist/journalist, Orlando Sentinel (1971-2001) -- May 17
· Bill Rutherford, former Treasurer of Oregon and Chair of the Oregon Investment Council -- Sept. 1
· Richard Schmalensee, former Council of Economic Advisers member for President George H. W. Bush -- Oct. 12
· Jon Silver, former Republican Mayor of Portola Valley, California -- Sept. 24
· Gail Slocum, former Republican Mayor of Menlo Park, California -- Sept. '04
· Bob Smith, retired Republican Senator from New Hampshire -- Oct 28
· Andrew Sullivan, conservative columnist, former editor of The New Republic -- Oct. 26 (on Jul. 25 he announced he wouldn't vote for Bush)
· Russell E. Train, (interview) EPA chief under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford -- Jul. '04
· Jude Wanniski, former associate editor of The Wall Street Journal, coined term "supply side economics" -- Oct. 27
· Marshall Wittmann, former communications director to Arizona Republican Senator John McCain -- Oct. 7
· Various Republican Business Leaders -- Aug. 5
Republicans Who Will Not Vote For George W. Bush
· Basil Akers, 1992 RNC NM delegate for George H. W. Bush and U.S. Army intelligence analyst in Vietnam, Oct. 25
· Bob Barr, former Republican Representative from Georgia (1995-2003) -- Oct. 14
· Robert L. Black, retired Republican judge of the Ohio First District Court of Appeals -- Oct. 13
· John H. Buchanan, former Republican Congressman from Alabama -- Oct. 4
· Lincoln Chafee, Republican Senator from Rhode Island -- Oct. 4
· John Dean, former White House Counsel to former Republican President Nixon -- Apr. '04
· Paul Findley, former Republican Representative from Illinois -- Apr. '04
· A. Linwood Holton former Republican Governor of Virginia (1970-74) -- Aug. 29
· Log Cabin Republicans -- Sept. 8
· Paul O'Neill, former Treasury Secretary to Republican President George W. Bush -- Jan. '04
· Richie Robb, mayor of South Charleston, WV (and 2004 Electoral College WV Republican elector) -- Sep. '04
· William Saletan, "liberal Republican" columnist for Slate -- Sept. 1
· Karl W. B. Schwarz, very conservative Republican from Arkansas -- Oct. 20 (see also <1>)
· Walter Olson, Bush 2000 campaign advisor -- Oct. 26
John Eisenhower:
Why I will vote for John Kerry for President
By JOHN EISENHOWER
THE Presidential election to be held this coming Nov. 2 will be one of extraordinary importance to the future of our nation. The outcome will determine whether this country will continue on the same path it has followed for the last 3½ years or whether it will return to a set of core domestic and foreign policy values that have been at the heart of what has made this country great.
Now more than ever, we voters will have to make cool judgments, unencumbered by habits of the past. Experts tell us that we tend to vote as our parents did or as we “always have.” We remained loyal to party labels. We cannot afford that luxury in the election of 2004. There are times when we must break with the past, and I believe this is one of them.
As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration’s decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.
The fact is that today’s “Republican” Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word “Republican” has always been synonymous with the word “responsibility,” which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today’s whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion.
Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs. That has meant respect for others. America, though recognized as the leader of the community of nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick separate from that community and at times insulting towards it. Leadership involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically devoid of significance. Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance.
In the Middle East crisis of 1991, President George H.W. Bush marshaled world opinion through the United Nations before employing military force to free Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. Through negotiation he arranged for the action to be financed by all the industrialized nations, not just the United States. When Kuwait had been freed, President George H. W. Bush stayed within the United Nations mandate, aware of the dangers of occupying an entire nation.
Today many people are rightly concerned about our precious individual freedoms, our privacy, the basis of our democracy. Of course we must fight terrorism, but have we irresponsibly gone overboard in doing so? I wonder. In 1960, President Eisenhower told the Republican convention, “If ever we put any other value above (our) liberty, and above principle, we shall lose both.” I would appreciate hearing such warnings from the Republican Party of today.
The Republican Party I used to know placed heavy emphasis on fiscal responsibility, which included balancing the budget whenever the state of the economy allowed it to do so. The Eisenhower administration accomplished that difficult task three times during its eight years in office. It did not attain that remarkable achievement by cutting taxes for the rich. Republicans disliked taxes, of course, but the party accepted them as a necessary means of keep the nation’s financial structure sound.
The Republicans used to be deeply concerned for the middle class and small business. Today’s Republican leadership, while not solely accountable for the loss of American jobs, encourages it with its tax code and heads us in the direction of a society of very rich and very poor.
Sen. Kerry, in whom I am willing to place my trust, has demonstrated that he is courageous, sober, competent, and concerned with fighting the dangers associated with the widening socio-economic gap in this country. I will vote for him enthusiastically.
I celebrate, along with other Americans, the diversity of opinion in this country. But let it be based on careful thought. I urge everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike, to avoid voting for a ticket merely because it carries the label of the party of one’s parents or of our own ingrained habits.
John Eisenhower, son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, served on the White House staff between October 1958 and the end of the Eisenhower administration. From 1961 to 1964 he assisted his father in writing “The White House Years,” his Presidential memoirs. He served as American ambassador to Belgium between 1969 and 1971. He is the author of nine books, largely on military subjects.
Elmer L. Andersen: Why this Republican ex-governor will be voting for Kerry
Elmer L. Andersen
October 13, 2004 ANDERSEN1013
Throughout my tenure and beyond as the 30th governor of this state, I have been steadfastly aligned -- and until recently, proudly so -- with the Minnesota Republican Party.
It dismays me, therefore, to have to publicly disagree with the national Republican agenda and the national Republican candidate but, this year, I must.
The two "Say No to Bush" signs in my yard say it all.
The present Republican president has led us into an unjustified war -- based on misguided and blatantly false misrepresentations of the threat of weapons of mass destruction. The terror seat was Afghanistan. Iraq had no connection to these acts of terror and was not a serious threat to the United States, as this president claimed, and there was no relation, it's now obvious, to any serious weaponry. Although Saddam Hussein is a frightful tyrant, he posed no threat to the United States when we entered the war. George W. Bush's arrogant actions to jump into Iraq when he had no plan how to get out have alienated the United States from our most trusted allies and weakened us immeasurably around the world.
Also, if there as well had been proper and careful coordination of services and intelligence on Sept. 11, 2001, that horrific disaster might also have been averted. But it was a separate event from this brutal mess of a war, and the disingenuous linking of the wholly unrelated situation in Iraq to 9/11 by this administration is not supported by the facts.
Sen. John Kerry was correct when he said that seemingly it is only Bush and Dick Cheney who still believe their own spin. Both men spew outright untruths with evangelistic fervor. For Bush -- a man who chose to have his father help him duck service in the military during the Vietnam War -- to disparage and cast doubt on the medals Kerry won bravely and legitimately in the conflict of battle is a travesty.
For Cheney to tell the hand-picked, like-minded Republican crowds in Des Moines last month that to vote for John Kerry could mean another attack like that of 9/11 is reprehensible. Moreover, such false statements encourage more terrorist attacks rather than prevent them.
A far smaller transgression, but one typical of his stop-at-nothing tactics, was Cheney's assertion in last Wednesday's vice-presidential debate that he'd never met Sen. John Edwards until that night. The next day -- and the media must stay ever-vigilant at fact-checking the lies of this ticket -- news reports, to the contrary, showed four video clips of Edwards and Cheney sitting next to each other during the past five years.
In both presidential debates, Kerry has shown himself to be of far superior intellect and character than Bush. He speaks honestly to the American people, his ethics are unimpeachable and, clearly, with 20 respected years in the Senate, he has far better credentials to lead the country than did Bush when he was elected four years ago. And a far greater depth of understanding of domestic and foreign affairs to do it now.
Not that the sitting president has ever really been at the helm.
I am more fearful for the state of this nation than I have ever been -- because this country is in the hands of an evil man: Dick Cheney. It is eminently clear that it is he who is running the country, not George W. Bush.
Bush's phony posturing as cocksure leader of the free world -- symbolized by his victory symbol on the aircraft carrier and "mission accomplished" statement -- leave me speechless. The mission had barely been started, let alone finished, and 18 months later it still rages on. His ongoing "no-regrets," no-mistakes stance and untruths on the war -- as well as on the floundering economy and Bush administration joblessness -- also disappoint and worry me.
Liberal Republicans of my era and mind-set used to have a humane and reasonable platform. We advocated the importance of higher education, health care for all, programs for children at risk, energy conservation and environmental protection. Today, Bush and Cheney give us clever public relations names for programs -- need I say "No Child Left Behind? -- but a lack of funding to support them. Early childhood education programs and overall health care are woefully underfunded. We have not only the largest number ever of medically uninsured in this nation, our infant mortality rates, once among the lowest in the world, have worsened to 27th.
As taxes for the wealthy are being cut, jobs are being outsourced if not lost and children are homeless and uninsured, this administration is running up the biggest deficit in U.S. history -- bound to be a terrible burden for future generations.
This imperialistic, stubborn adherence to wrongful policies and known untruths by the Cheney-Bush administration -- and that's the accurate order -- has simply become more than I can stand.
Although I am a longtime Republican, it is time to make a statement, and it is this: Vote for Kerry-Edwards, I implore you, on Nov. 2.
Elmer L. Andersen was Minnesota's governor from 1961 to 1963.
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