Powell: I'm still a Republican but will 'stick with' Obama in 2012
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday endorsed President Barack Obama for the second time.
"Well, you know I voted for him in 2008 and I plan to stick with him in 2012, and I’ll be voting for he and for Vice President Joe Biden next month," the retired general told CBS News.
Powell pointed to Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's policies on the budget, foreign policy, education, climate and immigration as a cause for concern.
"With respect to Governor Romney, I have the utmost respect to him but as I listen to what his proposals are especially with respect to dealing with our most significant issue, the economy, it's essentially let's cut taxes and compensate for that with other things," he said. "But that compensation does not cover all of the cuts intended or the new expenses associated with defense."
"Not only am I not comfortable with what Gov. Romney is proposing for his economic plan, I have concerns about his views on foreign policy," he continued. "The governor who was speaking on Monday night at the debate was saying things that were quite different from what he said earlier. So, I'm not quite sure which Gov. Romney we would be getting with respect to foreign policy."
"I think that there are some very strong neoconservative views that are presented by the governor that I have some trouble with," Powell noted. "There are other issues as well, not just the economy and foreign policy. I'm more comfortable with President Obama and his administration when it comes to issues like what are we going to do about climate, what are we going to do about immigration, what are we going to do about education? Lots of things like that."
He added that "Obamacare" wasn't perfect, but "I do not want to see that plan thrown off the table."
"What I see when I look at that plan is that 30 million of our fellow citizens will not be covered by insurance and I think that's good. We are one of the few nations in the world with our size and population and wealth that does not have universal health care."
President George W. Bush's former secretary of state explained that as a moderate Republican, he was a "dying breed."
"I think I'm a Republican of a more moderate mold and that's something of a dying breed, I'm sorry to say," he told CBS host Norah O'Donnell. "But you know the Republicans I worked for, President Reagan, President Bush 41, the [former Republican Sen.] Howard Bakers of the world -- people who were conservative, people who were willing to push their conservative views, but people who recognized that at the end of the day, you've got to find a basis for compromise."
Watch this video from CBS' This Morning, broadcast Oct. 25, 2012.
