Former Republican Gov. William Milliken of Michigan endorsed Democratic Sen. John Kerry for president on Monday, saying President Bush has pursued policies "pandering to the extreme right wing."

Milliken, governor from 1969-82, accused the Bush administration of rushing into the Iraq war, pushing tax cuts that benefit the rich and blocking meaningful stem-cell research.

"I felt so strongly about the direction of this country that in the end, it wasn't a difficult decision to make," Milliken said in an interview Monday with Traverse City Record-Eagle reporters and editors.

Milliken issued a three-page statement of his views about Bush and domestic and international issues.

"This president has pursued policies pandering to the extreme right wing across a wide variety of issues and has exacerbated the polarization and the strident, uncivil tone of much of what passes for political discourse in this country today," Milliken said in the statement.

Link.

Milliken is by far not the first moderate Republican to be disappointed in the the direction in which the President has led this country and the GOP. Longtime Kentucky Republican Ballard Morton recently spoke out against his party; GOP Senator Lincoln Chafee (RI) has said he will not vote for President Bush; Arlen Specter has mourned the decreasing ranks of moderates in the Republican caucus; many former Governors, Senators and Agency Secretaries have formed a group to bring the GOP back to the mainstream; moderate Republicans in Minnesota have spoken out; former GOP Senator Edward Brooke, the only African-American man ever elected to the Senate, has penned an article condemning GOP extremism.

As I wrote before, the fact is that the Republican coalition founded by Reagan in 1980 and confirmed by Newt Gingrich in 1994--bloated after nearly 24 years at the helm of the nation in one way or another--is set to crumble at any minute. After having bowed to the extreme right over the past year in an attempt to win this year's Presidential election, moderate Republicans across the nation are moments away from leaving the party in droves.

Jim Jeffords already left the party, as have the aforementioned moderate coalition of former governors and senators, and Chafee has now signaled he might even be willing to leave the party. Perhaps even Maine's Snowe and Collins might also be persuaded to make the switch, thus completely finishing the Rockefeller wing of the GOP. One thing is known, though; if Bush doesn't lose most Republican moderates before this election, there's no way they will continue to suffer voiceless in this coalition indefinitely.