Open-Minded Obama Earns Backing of GOP Stalwart

Lawyer Kmiec disagrees on most issues, backs candidate anyway
By Jonas Oransky,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 24, 2008 4:18 PM CDT
Open-Minded Obama Earns Backing of GOP Stalwart
Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama D-Ill., takes a bite of pizza at American Dream Pizza in Corvallis, Ore., Friday, March 21, 2008.   (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The former legal counsel to Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush is siding with Barack Obama, calling the Democrat “a person of integrity, intelligence and good will.” Doug Kmiec disagrees with the candidate on gay marriage, abortion, states’ rights, and the place of religion in the public sphere, but he says Obama’s ability to engage opposing viewpoints won him over.

The ex-Mitt Romney adviser is bracing for his friends’ accusations of “party or intellectual treachery,” he writes in Slate. He wishes Obama would confront radical Islam "with the same clarity and honesty with which he has addressed the topic of race in America." But he’s seen the country taken to war “without sufficient justification or clear objective” and wants a uniter now. (More Barack Obama stories.)

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