Lawrence O’Donnell reports for the Huffington Post that popular African American Republican Colin Powell is getting ready to endorse a candidate. According to O’Donnell, it is likely that Powell will endorse Barack Obama.

As O’Donnell points out in his article, this would definitely be a blow to John McCain. After all, he was supposed to be a representative, a leader even, of the moderate conservative base of the Republican Party; that base which complained for years it did not have the chance to influence the party’s policies and direction. Powell too is considered to be an important leader of that faction. If he would now desert McCain in favor of Obama, it would once again make clear that McCain lost the very people he counted on, and whose support he needed to win.

For months people thought that McCain’s problem would be to convince the conservative base to vote for him, to campaign for him, and to do everything in their power to help him win. It now seems that this was not correct: the base is supporting him, but moderate conservatives are bailing out on him.

Having said that, if there was one leading moderate Republican I would expect to endorse Obama, or at least not be surprised by such a move, it was Powell. The reasons:

1. He is an African American Republican, but not a conservative ideologue, making it less difficult for him to cross partylines to vote for a fellow African American who could become the country’s first such president.

2. He is undoubtedly angry with and disappointed by Republican leaders. He was Bush’s Secretary of State, but that did not play out so well. Bush used him, and then got rid of him, because his neoconservative advisers had more influence. Powell undoubtedly feels betrayed.

3. I think that Powell, perhaps rightfully, fears that McCain has surrounded himself with former Bush advisers and staffers; the same ones who did everything in their power to prevent Powell from even talking to the president when he was secretary of state, the same ones who were busily trying to destroy his image, and, lastly, the same ones who – in Powell’s eyes – handled Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan wrongly, and who did tremendous damage to the relationship between the U.S. and Europe.

4. Something called ambition.

In other words; if Powell endorses Obama, it won’t be a surprise for me.

What I do find interesting is that many moderate conservative Republicans are turning their backs on the GOP at the very moment one of their own could become the country’s president, if only they would support him. They were waiting for this moment for years, only to endorse Obama – a man with whose ideological views they can not possibly agree much – when it finally arrived. A strange situation but, perhaps, a sign of these people’s anger with the Republican Party and, not unimportant, them being impressed tremendously by Obama, as a speaker, organizer and personally; the man’s character – regardless of his political views – appeal to a lot of moderates everywhere (and rightfully so I believe, the only problem I have is that his moderate ‘character’ doesn’t mean he’ll be a moderate president; far from it, his record is distinctly liberal).