This has got to hurt:
Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, has long been one of the most important conservative thinkers in the United States. Under President Reagan, he served, with great distinction, as Solicitor General of the United States. Since then, he has been prominently associated with several Republican leaders and candidates, most recently John McCain, for whom he expressed his enthusiastic support in January.
This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter, he said that chief among the reasons for his decision "is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."
(Oh, and if Rush is reading this: Fried isn't black, so you can scratch that off the reasons this Republican supports Obama.)
Fried is joined today by former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, who endorsed Obama today. Weld had supported Romney in the primaries.
A short diary but it epitomizes what Josh Marshall is calling "the flight to quality" among conservatives.
After all these years of hearing about Reagan Democrats, I can't wait for the media to refer to Republican defectors as Obama Republicans. After all these election cycles when we've heard about the importance of courting Reagan Democrats, soccer moms, and security moms, Obama Republicans will be the Holy Grail of political campaigns.