In the grand tradition of bloggers publicly breaking with political allies,
Foreign Policy blogger David Rothkopf has declared that he is no longer a
Democrat. His exit argument--though perhaps not as compactly melodramatic as Charles Johnson's farewell to the right--packs a punch. "Don't vote the party line," he exhorts his readers. "Don't buy the party line. Demand new ideas and vote for results not slogans." It's his blogging, he writes, that has "caused [him] to scrutinize the political process" and led to his apostasy.
The defection is interesting in part because Rothkopf is a former Clintonite, having held the
position of Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade.
Now, he says, he'd prefer to see a "three-way Obama/Biden vs.
Romney/Pawlenty vs. Petraeus/Bloomberg election" in 2012. Here are the final lines of his exit soliloquy:
The system is broken. And since I can't rely on the people in power to fix it, all I can do individually is to try to reclaim my little piece of that power structure. I can say: "I won't be defined by old labels. You don't have a call on my vote. Come and get it. Come and win it. And while you're at it, please note that real alternatives will be welcomed sooner rather than later.
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Heather Horn
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