A few days ago, in Wheat vs. Chaff, I excerpted Christopher Buckley‘s Sorry, Dad, I’m voting for Obama, and added this:
Now Buckley reports that, as a result of his Obama endorsement, he was in effect fired by the National Review, the magazine founded by his famous dad. Rich Lowry, the magazine’s editor, says otherwise. Whatever, Christopher’s sharpest points are not about what happened to him, but what’s happened to his party:
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So, I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me. But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it’s a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me. |
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While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case. |
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So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me. |
Maybe, after the electorate creams McCain and what’s left of his party, they can strike the yurt and start building something a bit more spacious again.
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