This will be a short diary.  The link to Wick Allison's article, "A Conservative for Obama," is here.

After defending himself as a conservative (whatever), he goes on to say some fairly interesting things about Obama:

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

I think this is the thing that could go over very well in phonebanking. Let's forgive Allison his attribution of prudency and pragmatism to conservatism. At this critical point in our history, with almost every segment of our society in collapse, is it possible for us to focus on the fundamentals?  And right now the fundamental question is--who are you going to vote for? Barack Obama? Great. For me, the rest is academic.

Later Allison writes,

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.

I think Obama's behavior during the primary and now in the general has more than shown that he is a realist, often to chagrin of the netroots. Nothing about Obama is impulsive. Everything is well thought out. Every move considered with several paces down considered as well.

And finally, Allison ends his piece which is music to my ears:

"Every great cause," Eric Hoffer wrote, "begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.

Let's hope conservatism is dead.  There is no bailout for a morally and politically corrupt way of governing. If Wick Allison wants to claim that intelligent, thoughtful, and even analysis is a conservative value--fine, whatever. So long as he votes, and perhaps takes a few who value his judgment with him, for Barack Obama.