U Know Where Freezes Over:Buckley Endorses Obama

Originally Posted By chickendumpling

William F. Buckley's son, Christopher Buckley is voting for Obama.

<a href="http://tinyurl.com/3l6z3z" target="_blank">http://tinyurl.com/3l6z3z</a>

He starts by writing: "I don’t have the kidney at the moment for 12,000 emails saying how good it is he’s no longer alive to see his Judas of a son endorse for the presidency a covert Muslim who pals around with the Weather Underground. So, you’re reading it here first."

"As to the particulars, assuming anyone gives a fig, here goes:
***
"McCain rose to power on his personality and biography. He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were “jerks” (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam—his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation. He told me across a lunch table, “The Keating business was much worse than my five and a half years in Hanoi, because I at least walked away from that with my honor.” Your heart went out to the guy. I thought at the time, God, this guy should be president someday."

"A year ago, when everyone, including the man I’m about to endorse, was caterwauling to get out of Iraq on the next available flight, John McCain, practically alone, said no, no—bad move. Surge. It seemed a suicidal position to take, an act of political bravery of the kind you don’t see a whole lot of anymore."

"But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?"

"All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain—who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust."

He goes on in the next post:

 

Originally Posted By chickendumpling

"As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days. Vietnam was brought to you by Harvard and (one or two) Yale men. As for our current adventure in Mesopotamia, consider this lustrous alumni roster. Bush 43: Yale. Rumsfeld: Princeton. Paul Bremer: Yale and Harvard. What do they all have in common? Andover! The best and the brightest."

"I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian. I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P.J. O’Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away."

"But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr."

"Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for."

"So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.

 

Originally Posted By chickendumpling

He posted in on-line first for a reason he explains in his intro which I thought was interesting so I'll post it too.

"I am—drum roll, please, cue trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast (what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column. For a reason: My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”

"As for Kathleen, she has to date received 12,000 (quite literally) foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails. One correspondent, if that’s quite the right word, suggested that Kathleen’s mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster. There’s Socratic dialogue for you. Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best. At any rate, I don’t have the kidney at the moment for 12,000 emails saying how good it is he’s no longer alive to see his Judas of a son endorse for the presidency a covert Muslim who pals around with the Weather Underground. So, you’re reading it here first."

There are interesting comments attached to the article as well.

 

Originally Posted By gadzuux

Well, conservatives can be right sometimes. And I can't fathom why anyone who takes a dispassionate look at the two candidates, and the two campaigns, can come to any other conclusion.

Gee, I hope douglas is lurking around. He's as big of an NRO accolyte as anybody. I'd be curious to see what he has to say about all of this.

 

Originally Posted By EighthDwarf

How refreshing. I have a new respect for conservatives now. They are so often represented by the Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity/Michael Savage/Sarah Palin crowd that it is easy to forget that there is real intellect on the right.

Let us hope that this intellect can find its way through the Republican party ranks - choosing between two intellectual candidates someday would be a real treat.

 

Originally Posted By SuperDry

Wow - interesting article. I'd say that among the things I've read recently, C Buckley is the kind of conservative that I think I am. It's refreshing to see that I'm not alone.

 

Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan

choosing between two intellectual candidates someday would be a real treat.<<

It would. I know there is a whole wing of the GOP sick to death of catering to shallow sound bytes and taking the low road. My hope is that people like Buckley and others will somehow get control of the party so that it isn't the "drill baby drill" chanters pushing the party's agenda.

 

Originally Posted By DAR

I know his dad was obviously a conservative, heck he founded the movement. But I though Christopher was more or less a libertarian. That doesn't mean that he can't vote for whomever though.

 

Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan

William F. Buckley was less than pleased with President Bush, especially in regards to Iraq.

 

Originally Posted By gadzuux

It's a safe bet he would have been appalled by McCain's choice of Palin too. He may have been cynical, but not THAT cynical.

 

Originally Posted By DAR

If I'm not mistaken Christopher Buckley wrote Thank You For Smoking.

 

Originally Posted By chickendumpling

Buckley is a political satirist & did write Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, Supreme Courtship, and a speech or two for then VP GHWB as C.Buckley was his chief speech writer in the early 80s.

Buckley also writes the back page column for National Review, and I think he is one of the editors at Forbes and writes for everything from The Atlantic Monthly to Conde Nast Traveler.

He has written other interesting articles about how he thinks the GOP has changed. One worth reading, imho, is entitled "Let's Quit While We're Behind" from Washington Monthly in 2006. I'd post it but the closing line violates community standards so you'll have to google it if you're interested. I may come back later when I have time & post excerpts.

I haven't been following it today but I expect that he will take a LOT of heat for saying he's voting Obama. I think 12000 hate emails may pale in comparison.

update- as I was writing this post I saw that he's resigned after NR readers blew a gasket over his Daily Beast Blog. He says, "to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I didn't leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me." You can find that at the Austin American-Statesman site.

 

Originally Posted By Dabob2

That's too bad. It's a real shame the party of my parents (who you might call "Ford Republicans" i.e. centrist) has been taken over by the yahoos, fundamentalists, and the neoconservatives who fancy themselves intellectual but are actually as naive about how things actually work than any too-idealistic liberal - and for the same reasons.

 

Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan

I think National Review needs Buckley a lot more than Buckley needs NR. Well, good that he resigned. I know there is a HUGE number of actually reasonable Republicans out there wanting their party back from the screwballs.

 

Originally Posted By gadzuux

Except I'm not sure they can win an election without them. That's why they were brought on board in the first place. They've been pandering to them for twenty years, and they carried bush through two elections - with some help from the vote swindlers.

 

Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan

>>Except I'm not sure they can win an election without them.<<

Well, not at the moment. It would take some time to clear the decks a bit and rebuild the GOP into a party that isn't pandering to the nuts.

But if they did it, if they were able to reinvent the GOP, I think they'd get a good chunk of moderate Democrats to cross party lines.

I think this country is crying out for a truly moderate, sensible third party OR for one of the two parties to morph into that.

 

Originally Posted By ecdc

>>Well, not at the moment. It would take some time to clear the decks a bit and rebuild the GOP into a party that isn't pandering to the nuts.<<

Yup. Both you and Dabob2 alluded to this. The problem is, sane Republicans don't want to admit there's something deeper wrong with their party. They think just toss out the current bum and all will be well. But the crazies are really running their party.

Today Sarah Palin did another hard-hitting interview with...wait for it...Rush Limbaugh! So far she's been interviewed by Hannity and Limbaugh. Can you imagine the meltdown some conservatives would be having if the only way Obama could win is by being interviewed by moveon.org and dailykos?

I know it's a bitter pill to swallow, conservatives. I know it's much, MUCH easier to attack the democrats than admit the serious flaws in your own party. I was there; I watched Kerry lose in 2004 after running a god-awful campaign. It was easier then to talk about how slimy the Republicans were. It didn't mean it wasn't true, it just meant I didn't want to admit the group I supported at the time couldn't get their own house in order.

Until the Republicans purge themselves, or at least shunt to the margins, the Limbaughs of the world, they're going to have a tough time.

 

Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan

>>Today Sarah Palin did another hard-hitting interview with...wait for it...Rush Limbaugh!<<

LOL! Hannity and Limbaugh. Did they ask her any of those tough "gotcha" questions, like what newspapers does she read?

 

Originally Posted By gadzuux

I think you're giving the "sane republicans" too much credit. These people sit silently and watch as their party engages in every despicable tactic in the book.

Kerry the decorated veteran was a "traitor". Bush the AWOL national guard pilot was a war hero.

Obama is a terrorist, a baby-killer, a liar, dangerous and even dishonorable. McCain is a 'steady hand on the tiller'. Obama is naive and untested, yet Palin is the perfect choice for reform.

Bill Clinton was one of the worst presidents ever, and the record economic expansion during his eight year administration was due to Bush 1's tax increases, which by the way were the reason Bush lost the re-election in the first place.

So without the 'nuts' in the GOP party, they stand no chance of being elected. People with reason and judgement will see them for what they are and vote for the other guy.

 

Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan

>>These people sit silently and watch as their party engages in every despicable tactic in the book. <<

But several prominent Republicans, including Buckley, have been putting stuff out there that flies in the face of these tactics. Several have written pretty scathing commentary regarding McCain's tactics, and especially the selection of Palin.

Of course there are lots of win-at-all-costs types, and lots of apologists who never question a thing their party does. Both parties have far too much of that.