Weld For Obama

Republican former Massachusetts Governor William Weld is endorsing Barack Obama, the Associated Press reports.

Weld released a statement calling Obama "the best candidate to move our country forward," and will announce the endorsement publicly later this morning in Salem, New Hampshire.

Weld has long been an advocate for "big-tent" Republican inclusion, to include supporters of gay rights, abortion rights, and other socially moderate positions. Nevertheless, he was an early and avid endorser of Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination, perhaps not appreciating how far to the right Romney was veering on those issues. 

Weld himself tacked rightward during his run for New York governor -- a campaign he eventually abandoned after running into a scandal over Decker College, but more importantly after facing steady, unrelenting opposition from conservatives in the state party.

His endorsement of Obama is one more sign that the GOP is pushing its moderates out of the party.