Excellent work, right-wingers:
Christopher Buckley, author and son of late conservative icon William F. Buckley, last week surprised readers of the magazine his father founded, the National Review: “Sorry, Dad, I’m voting for Obama” was the headline on The Daily Beast blog.
Tuesday in a phone interview with the Austin American-Statesman he revealed another surprise: After NR readers raised holy heck over his perceived betrayal of the right, he offered to resign his column – and it was accepted.
“It upset a great number of people – a huge number of canceled subscriptions, apostasy, the whole thing,” he said from Washington.
When he offered his resignation to the magazine’s editors, “I was sort of hoping for, ‘Well, let’s think about it,’ ” Buckley said. “But to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I didn’t leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me.”
Join the club, Christopher. It will be interesting to watch the GOP shrink to a few nativists, a couple religious nuts, and the Kathryn Jean-Lopez. Oops. That may have been redundant.
I think it is going to be a while before we hear about the big tent Republican party.
*** Update ***
More here from Buckley:
As for the mail flooding into National Review Online—that’s been running about, oh, 700-to-1 against. In fact, the only thing the Right can’t quite decide is whether I should be boiled in oil or just put up against the wall and shot. Lethal injection would be too painless.
***One editor at National Review—a friend of 30 years—emailed me that he thought my opinions “cretinous.”
***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.
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.
So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.
That bold part sounds familiar.
Comrade Nicole
Do I get to be the first post? Cool. Unless by thinking about what I’m going to write, I’ve missed my chance.
aimai
wow.
aimai
Fwiffo
The best way to improve your electoral prospects is to throw as many people overboard as possible. It’s a buoyancy issue.
Krista
Part of me wonders if down the road, we will actually see a viable third party emerge from all of the idealogical ostracization that has taken place within the Republican party.
Delia
Big Tent Republican Party. I suppose we can consign that phrase to the dustbin of Quaint, along with the Geneva Conventions.
Comrade Nicole
Awesome. Now that that’s out of the way…
I just don’t understand. I feel as though many of these people confuse their political party with their sports team- by God, they’re sticking with them through thick and thin, because you never know, they might show up and actually play well again someday.
Difference being a bad sports team can break your heart, but a bad government can break the country.
HumboldtBlue
And the Consitution.
Comrade Dreggas
Well, it’s no surprise. The republican party, including the sane ones, coddled and helped raise the republican party as it is today. They created this monster, it’s no surprise it turned around and bit them.
I still have to shake my head and chuckle every time I see them carp and complain about being attacked by their own.
Brian J
John, would you say you’re a Democrat in the sense that you agree with a decent portion of their policies even if you are not a hardcore leftist, or is it more a matter of them being the least bad of the two major options?
libarbarian
(1) Unlike the Democrats, Republicans welcome dissent, but Bucklet.
(2) Random Sarah Palin news: Palin Imitates Colbert.
Sarah Palin: "“Man, I love small-town U.S.A., and I don’t care what anyone else says about small-town U.S.A. You guys, you just get it.”
Colbert: "You get it and you come from a long line of it-getters".
Jeebus!
Comrade The Moar You Know
GOP = footbullet
PeakVT
Larrison, Buckley, Frum, Parker – anyone else commit apostasy lately?
John Cole
@Brian J: Maybe to the first part, yes definitely to the second part. I will have to wait and see how the Democrats behave when they are in control to decide whether I like it. Although I am more to the left than the party on the death penalty and the drug war and a few other issues.
We could very possibly see me furious at the Democrats in ten years. I would almost bet on it, particularly if they go insane.
Shygetz
@Brian J: The Democratic party is not, nor has it ever been, hardcore leftist. This country has never had a viable national hardcore leftist party.
liberal
John Cole wrote,
Hardly. As long as the Republican party offers outsized tax breaks to the filthy rich, they’ll get their support.
max
I think it is going to be a while before we hear about the big tent Republican party.
All hail the pup tent party!
max
[‘Duplex insult intended.’]
Brian J
John, inorger words you are a moderate not in the faux sense but in the Brad DeLong sense? Care to elaborate a little more on a few issues?
Brian J
Fair point, Shygetz.
Delia
This is the basic problem. Is the Big Tent big enough for filthy rich plutocrats who don’t care what you think as long as you have scads of capital and want to impoverish everybody else, as well as the intolerant fundies who don’t necessarily have wealth but seem to want to burn everyone at the stake who doesn’t think the way they do?
What a deep philosophical dilemma.
Bubblegum Tate
@Krista:
I wonder that, too, and frankly, I’d like to see it happen. Truth be told, I’d like to see four parties here: left-wing crazies, right-wing crazies, left-wing non-crazies, and right-wing non-crazies.
As long as I’m snorting genie fumes, I’d also like $50 million.
jake 4 that 1
K-Load stood athwart Buckley the Younger and yelled STOP!
At this rate the GOP will render itself ineffective simply because people like K-Load will be the only ones spreading their ideas. Kind of hard to get the message out if people can’t understand what the hell you’re trying to say and laugh their asses off once they unravel the fractured sentences.
Dr.BDH
It’s Trotskyites vs. Stalinists all over again, this time with wingnuts! Watch for the wingnut "Darkness at Noon." Except it’ll be called, "Dorkness at Noonan."
Napoleon
Someone ought to send Christopher an invite to hang out here until they decide to let him back in the clubhouse.
Martin
I look forward to a Republican party whose only standard-bearers are Gordon Libby and Sean Hannity. That’ll be some entertainment there…
Svensker
What about David Frum? Is he going to get bounced, too? Ooh, I’d like to see all their stuff being thrown out the windows and onto the street. ("Their stuff" includes Frum.)
Ash Can
Only if we can still drop F-bombs in his presence.
stickler
When those yahoos over at RedState promised to be the vanguard of the Republican future, they weren’t kidding. National Review just "blammed" Christopher Buckley for apostasy!
The Erick Erickson plan for ideological purity (and political irrelevance) is succeeding wildly, I guess.
Maybe by 2011 the GOP will have successfully been transformed into a regional, Southern Baptist fringe group, which garners 20% of the vote but still controls Alabama.
SamFromUtah
@stickler: Maybe by 2011 the GOP will have successfully been transformed into a regional, Southern Baptist fringe group, which garners 20% of the vote but still controls Alabama.
And, oddly, Utah – even though the Mormons and Southern Baptists can’t stand each other.
Bubblegum Tate
They’d probably own South Carolina, too, because, well, that state is fucking nuts.
Kali's Little Sister
I’ve felt this for awhile, but the feeling grows…
Joe Max
I dunno, John, that’s very much Libertarian-wing conservatism, one of those places where the circle meets.
The conservative position should be that while the Government has a responsibility to protect the citizens from criminals, the government shouldn’t have the power of premeditated life and death over the citizens.
And the Drug War, even WFBjr thought it was an abomination.
Jorge
The night of the long knives has started… William F. Buckley’s son just got stabbed over a Christianist from Alaska.
And Kristol had a knife waved in his face by McCain flunkies.
Who is next?
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
This is like what happened up here. We used to have a national party called, not too oxymoronically, the Progressive Conservatives. It included your standard conservatives, rather like what John Rogers called grownup Republicans and what we called Blue Tories. And you had your social liberals who were still fiscally conservative, the good old Red Tories like Joe Clark and Flora MacDonald. (Up here, red is liberal and blue is conservative. Don’t ask me what way water drains down the tub, either, OK?)
And then it all went to shit as Mulroney made the party so unpopular that they became Tories, Party of Two in 1993. Campbell was the spanking new replacement for Mulroney who got, well, spanked, as the party dropped from a majority of 153 seats in Parliament to two seats, not even enough to maintain official party status. Campbell was not one of those elected. They limped up to 20 seats under Charest a few years later, but all the red-meat conservatives had decamped to the REFOOOOOORRRRM party out west, and within a few years, the Tories and the REFOOOOOORRRRM party had merged to become the plain old Conservatives.
So, boys and girls, what used to be a reasonably decent right-center party has morphed into something much more conservative, but because of our multi-party system, a population that really does lean to the left splits its vote among the Liberals and the NDP and the Bloc Québecois (the federal level separatists party) and the Greens.
Yeah, I voted today. Yeah, the Tories will get another minority tonight. Why didn’t I pick up some beer while I was at it?
Comrade Dread
That’s it for me.
But given the nature of our political machine, I imagine in about four to six months into an Obama presidency, I’ll be complaining about something stupid the Democrats are doing.
But the Dems will have to really work hard at being abysmal and corrupt for a long time before I’ll think about pulling the lever for a Republican again.
Nylund
The biggest tent the GOP will ever see from now on is when Rich Lowry gets his hands on Hustler’s new video, "Nailin’ Palin".
comrade scott
That’s normal for Dems. We’ll trot out the ole cir ku lar firin’ squad and start a’blazin’.
I’m hoping that’s also what will keep the Dems honest. I’ve always said that one-party rule is a bad thing in the long run and if the Repups can’t do it in opposition, than we screamin’ DFHs will attempt to do it from within.
NonyNony
I’m stunned. Honestly, Christopher Buckley isn’t even someone I’d consider a "moderate". His decision to vote for/endorse Obama was pretty much "McCain is insane, and the country really shouldn’t be led by insane people". Kicked off of National Review for making an observation that people shouldn’t vote for the insane guy – amazing.
As far as the "far left" nature of the Democratic Party goes – ha! Once you get outside the Republican bubble it becomes pretty clear that the Democratic Party is a slightly center-left party. The radicals in the Democratic party are so marginalized that their ideas barely get a hearing. Most 21st century Democrats would have been happy in the Republican Party circa 1970. If anything I’d like to see a true "leftist" opposition party crop up so that it might become a bit more obvious that the Dems are a bunch of moderates at this point. (It’s tough to make the case when the only thing you have to compare them to is the far-right crazyfest that the Republican Party has become – Dwight Eisenhower looks like a far-left loony radical if the modern-day GOP is the comparison point for "standard conservative").
Delia
It’ll be the last divide in the little tent. In the evenings for entertainment the S. Baptists and the Mormons can drink pink lemonade, eat tuna noodle casserole and green jello with pineapple and cottage cheese, and hold scripture chases until they all drop from exhaustion.
Napoleon
My first vote for a national office was when I was 19 in 1980 and I could have gone either way in what party I voted for. I swear the the Republican party at that time was likely to the left of the Democratic party today.
PaminBB
Oh, I think they still have a big tent. It’s very white and very empty, with a strong echo. Also, as others have alluded to, no drinking or dancing.
Comrade Scrutinizer
True that. But even in the Democratic Party, we’ve not had many lefties that amounted to much: FDR and LBJ were as far left as the Party ever got. Put most of that down to the Southern Democrats, who were only Democrats because Lincoln was a Republican, and "By God, if Lincoln was a Republican, me and mine are going to be anything but." Liberal Dems not only had to fight the Republicans, they had to fight the Southern Dems as well.
I miss the times when there was a continuinuium of extremes in both parties. While the Republicans as a rule were on average more to the right than the Dems, it was possible to find certain Republicans who were farther to the left than certain Democrats. While the Dems still have a range of liberals to conservatives in the party, the Republicans have pretty much given up that tradition.
joel hanes
For the past sixteen years, the Democratic Party has been a center-right party with a few liberal members and no actual leftists. This is unlikely to change any time soon.
Richard Cheney is a radical rightist.
There are no radical leftists in US politics.
Dr. Loveless
So which one is Buckley? Jones, Aaronson or Rutherford?
Comrade Dread
I’m not. This purge has been going on for some time to anyone who strays too far outside of the acceptable party line.
And the venomous reactions to dissent are par for the course. I’m not a liberal, by any means, (conservative libertarian), but by the reactions I get from the nutters online, I can say it doesn’t really matter. You still get the hate as a ‘librul terrerist luver’.
It also doesn’t matter that you’re able to articulate rationally why you don’t buy the party line. That just makes you one of them elitist types.
The Republican party abandoned conservatism for blind idealism and corporatism a long time ago.
leo
I’m trying to be positive about this but if it took George Bush to get all these guys to come over to our side, what will is take to get them on the wagon for Universal Health Care?
I dread to think.
From a (I didn’t need to be born-again to be) a Liberal
Grumpy Code Monkey
I thought it was Pat Buchanan who said "I didn’t leave the party, the party left me." When the hell did Reagan bag on the GOP?
Sasha
Any chance that the NYT will swap out Kristol for Buckley?
jake 4 that 1
@Grumpy Code Monkey: I thought it was Lincoln Chafee.
SamFromUtah
So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.
Protip: Reagan wasn’t all that, either.
John Cole
@Grumpy Code Monkey: That was what Reagan said about the Democratic party, which he was a member of for years.
Sarcastro
The Dems should finish the Republican party as a major national force. Then they can amicably split into center-left and center-right parties (the blue-dogs get to be Whigs) with the Repubs and Greens pulling from either end.
Still not much joy for us libertarian/syndicalist types on either end of the spectrum, but let’s stay within the realms of possibility for now.
Comrade Stuck
The last time we had a dem prez and a solidly dem congress was when Carter was elected in "76". The country was in dire straights then, at least fiscally (even more than now in some ways) and the populace was fed up with it’s government and it’s leaders. ALthough right now it appears there is little comparison of political skills between Obama and Carter, as Obama is much superior in the department, the political dynamics are comparable,
What I remember happening then was a roaring foodfight that erupted within the dem party with all sorts of intra- party factions developing into a kind of well, you might say, one dandy round firing squad like referenced by Comrade Scott. I’d say the tendency for the same is still present, but possibly with the mitigating difference of dems having experienced many years in the pol wilderness during the interim and a pretty darn sharp cookie in Obama. We shall see what happens, if he’s elected. But for sure, the Funhouse will stay open 24/7 and business will be good, especially when the wingnuts begin to grow fangs and hunt at night.
Interrobang
I love how Reagan is the very model of the "real conservative." News flash, ya moron, Reagan was into all that stuff too, or did Iran-Contra, recycled Watergate plotters, the CIA running drugs, the S&L scandals, "voodoo economics," James Watt’s being a batshit insane fundie, Richard Viguerie’s pivotal role in the 1980 election, and tomato being a vegetable just disappear down the memory hole when I wasn’t paying attention?
Brian J
I guess you could say it’s a mixture for me, too. I’m probably more of a moderate Democrat, at least on some issues, but I’m disgusted enough with the Republicans to turn into a partisan, even if my ideology isn’t particularly extreme. If that makes any sense.
If nothing else, the Democrats seem to the party of sanity and competence. I like the party on most issues of economic fairness, most social policies, and almost everything else. I’d like to think I’m enough of a realist to be willing to vote for a conservative if there was a liberal that acted like McCain is acting now. So while I’m in agreement with what a lot of the Democrats are saying, which I don’t think is particularly left-wing, I also respect the party that offers us a chance at competence.
Brian J
I pretty much agree with all of that, but the mention of the "far left" was merely a way to describe the people who would, for better or worse, vote for the Democrats even with a gun pointed to their head. I didn’t know if it was more of an ideological transformation or a mixture of that and the steaming pile of shit that the Republican party has become.
dr. bloor
I’m going to guess Buckley didn’t say anything in that bolded paragraph contemporaneously with the events he refers to, or we’d have been reading this post seven years ago.
Comrade Ed Drone
No, that’s "Pendant Bush, le déluge {Katrina)."
And, on another topic,
[William Shatner]
.
Piker! Wuss! Momma’s Boy!
.
$99 million — Now you’re negotiating!
[/William Shatner]
(I hate those commercials!)
.
Ed
TheRideTaken
It is strange how people talk about media-assigned labels with such seriousness, when it is in fact an existential joke.
Under Con rules, wanting a decent life and future is "leftist" if you are Middle Class. If you want your tax dollars to go to universal healthcare and education rather than scheming banksters and war, you are a member of "The Left."
My hearty suggestion is to quit playing the Establishment’s game, on their field, by their rules. "We the People" will always lose that game.
While "the Left" has been busy fighting shadows and avoiding the scary reality that we are in a Class War, America has been looted. The merchants killed the Golden Goose; the "bailout" was the last extractable golden egg. It is being served as omelets to the wolves, who will use the resources to buy the minds of this hapless population as it impoverishes them.
Screw nuance: WHERE IS OSAMA BIN LADIN? Where is the enemy of our nation whose pursuit cost us our birthright and legacy from the whole liberal era? Where is he? We don’t need all this silly back-and-forth as if "conservative" traitors are worthy of having a discussion with. WHERE IS BIN LADIN?
People still argue and link and snark concerning lies. It will indicate actual seriousness in this country when we quit speaking in their words. The REAL division ain’t "left" and "right" it’s Upper and Lower.
Another factoid not publicized: there is NO MIDDLE CLASS in conservative ideology.
Sorry if these ideas are too "leftist" and I even have another: The whole idea of politics symbolized in the name "Progressive" is to advance forward and NOT see-saw between Right and Left. This is a very old game. You win by not playing.
Comrade Stuck
I was not a Reagan fan by any stretch, and he did introduce us to the disastrous "trickle down econ theory" and the first 2 years of his administration did use some of Bush’s thug tactics against wingut hated government agencies like within Watt’s interior dept. I know cause I was working for one of those agencies at the time.
But when his poll ratings began to slip with these quasi Rovian tactics, Reagan made some changes and calmed down the wingnut devil dogs into a more traditonal GOP restraint mode. There was still plenty of wingnuttery to go around, but it wasn’t realized in actions anywhere near what we’ve seen with Bush and his crime family. And despite Reagan’s tough talk on Foreign policy, he wasn’t a warmonger like GWB. Nevertheless, I do believe in many ways his presidency sewed the seeds for many of the wingnut clusterfucks we see now, but then he didn’t get elected with 50+1 percent or with the vote of the SCOTUS. He was mandated with landslides, so he did have the blessing of a solid majority of Americans.
smokey
Has anyone seen Comrade John and Comrade Christopher in the same room together?
Cris v.3.1
Assuming by "true" you mean "viable." We have the makings of a left-opposition party in the Greens. Their platform is fairly coherent and definitely leftist, but in practice they’re absolutely unorganized and serve only as a magnet for a clusterfuck of highly-focused grievances.
Yes.
NonyNony
Those are actually different groups of folks – my moderately conservative grandma is a Yellow Dog Democrat – she’s been a Dem all her life and she’d vote for a houseplant if it had a "D" next to its name on the ballot. She’d never think to vote for a Republican because she considers them crooks and thieves (my grandma is a Depression-era FDR voter and thought Reagan was a crook).
OTOH – I have a couple of friends who consider themselves Socialists and have trouble convincing themselves to vote for Democrats every election cycle. Sometimes they stay home, sometimes they write in a candidate, sometimes they vote for the Green (if applicable) and sometimes – as with this year – they hold their nose and vote for the Dem. They think the Dems are too conservative. The Dems don’t like to go for the far left voters because, well, 1968 – I think.
Xanthippas
Let’s not get carried away. Many of those who have anointed Reagan a saint in conservative heaven are also the same ones who fawn over Bush Jr., and that fact alone should tell you something about what a "real" conservative is like.
Speaking of which, what exactly is a conservative these days anyway? I’m dismissive of the "real conservative" movement as I think it’s full of people who either are taken aback by the stunning ineptitude of this administration but actually embrace most modern Republican policies (including the militarism, the nativism and the religiosity) or people who really are libertarians but are just afraid to admit it. Even conservatives can’t agree on what conservatism is, and are constantly impugning each other as not "real" conservatives.
There’s nothing to rival this dichotomy on the left. We most certainly do not have non-progressives claiming to be progressives, or non-liberals claiming to be liberals. If you say you are a progressive or a liberal, everybody on both sides of the aisle believes you and knows where you stand.
Frankly, it’s my opinion that Bush conservatives ARE the real conservatives, because conservatism in the modern era (from the late 40’s on at least) means nativism, tribalism, militarism, authoritarianism, anti-intellectualism and an unhealthy distrust of democratic institutions. The fact that when these traits are combined in one party that gains unprecedented power, the result is a government that is stunningly corrupt and incompetent, leads people to want to question what "real" conservatism is, but the answer is and has always been the same.
Brachiator
@Shygetz:
Probably a good thing, since a viable hardcore leftist party is a contradiction in terms.
Was it David Brooks, in a recent NY Times column, who was forced to acknowledge that the GOP was pushing thinking people out of the party? They had already closed ranks and exiled libertarians and moderates. Some of their positions, such as tolerance of creationism, is even more primitive than current Catholic thought on the issue of evolution.
It is wild to watch as the Republicans react to Obama’s candidacy by becoming more insular and batshit crazy.
Amen to that! One of the reasons that hardcore left or right parties fail to gain a long term foothold in this country is that they too often get tangled up in theoretical arguments about ideological purity and demands for party loyalty. But the average citizen cares more about his or her pocketbook than how pretty and pure a political party looks from the outside.
Ash Can
Psst–that’s *ketchup* being a vegetable. And yes, that brings back such wonderful memories of how Reagan cherished the public school children of this nation.
Comrade Dread
That’s one key difference that’s worthy A LOT to me.
Reagan talked tough and beefed up defense spending, but he was a realist and he knew that pushing the Soviets to war was a nightmare policy.
I don’t know if you recall the amount of flak Reagan got for his constant talks with the Soviets, but he got slapped with all of the favorites the neocons love to call we modern folk who suggest that we might want to talk to our enemies to see if we can resolve our differences before we bomb the bejeezus out of them.
As to Iran Contra, yeah, it sucked, but at least we were talking to them via back channels. ;)
Grumpy Code Monkey
@John Cole: D’Oh. I knew that. Really I did.
kay
Obama drove the Clinton’s crazy and now he’s driving Republicans completely over the edge.
Palin wasn’t organic, as a pick. Palin was a reaction to the Obama/Clinton epic battle.
I have no idea what this means in terms of his capacity to govern well, but I’m thoroughly enjoying it.
Cris v.3.1
I honestly don’t recall that, but I wish the nonsense-vendors today would remember that when they try to pretend that Reagan won the Cold War by shaking his fist at the Soviets and Obama’s dedication to diplomacy is tantamount to surrender.
Bubblegum Tate
These days? Somebody who hates gays, hates every belief system that is not Christianity, doesn’t care for women getting all uppity and working and stuff, is endlessly fixated on the sex lives of strangers, and thinks upper-bracket tax rates must be cut no matter the circumstances.
Basically, hardline social con shit with a touch of supply-side economics as a chaser.
One would hope it will eventually reform itself into something worthwhile.
Frank
Reagan did get flak for talking to the Soviets, and one of the more vitriolic pieces of flak he got was from the Congressman from Wyoming. Guy by the name of Dick.
I’m one of them hard core leftist types and thus no fan of Reagan, but the "not a warmonger" difference between Reagan and the Shrub administration is real. Dick’s example number one: the guy who attacked Reagan from the right now runs the Shrub show. That says it all right there.
dr. luba
I’ve been reading Buckley’s books for years, and have found them funny. This is odd, as most Republicans seem to have a congenital lack of a sense of humor. Now I understand.
Similarly, I started reading John Cole a few years ago, and found him to be lucid and usually well-spoken. But he was BOTH a Republican and a member of Pajamas Media. He soon corrected that situation.
Mark Wolfe
Just goes to show you that people of real intelligence eventually figure it out. Even though I often disagreed with him, I always respected William F. Buckleys’ intelligence and well-thought out arguments. Intelect such as his no longer exists within the conservative movement. As more people begin to figure out the same thing, the conservative movement begins to look and smell more like the bowel movement it has always really been.
Comrade Dread
Yeah, he got called appeaser, naive, foolish, pretty much akin to Chamberlain, etc. Exact same neocon playbook.
Reagan presented a firm front, but he actually believed in diplomacy and talking to our enemy who was much more dangerous to the world than Iran is. Imagine that, knowing your nation is strong enough to talk and negotiate and not bluster.
You can, of course, see why that’s not a legacy the Neocons would like you to remember.
Because you might realize that the guy running to be the President who most closely resembles that attitude on foreign policy is on the other team, not the guy running in Reagan’s old party.
ksmiami
Hey John – don’t give yurts a bad name. My husband had a great time staying in one when he was a poor student and skiing in Taos…
LarryB
Who will be voted off the island next? <Snort>.
Just Some Fuckhead
Operation GOP In a Bathroom Stall continues apace.
Comrade Vida Loca
I’m sort of picturing it all like those last heady days of the French Revolution when the Jacobins started turning on one another.
Can we set up an Act Blue account to buy them a guillotine?
oh really
This is why, despite his displeasure with Palin and McCain, there is no reason to believe there is any hope for Buckley.
There is a straight line between Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party and the Modern Republican Party. If the party is worse today than it was when Reagan was in office, it’s only because there were still some moderate Republicans left in Reagan’s day, whereas today the few remaining "moderates" always seem to step up (or fall down) and support the worst impulses of the party when it matters most. The Snowes, Collins, and Lugars have helped Bush repeatedly when their opposition might have made a real difference (war, tax cuts, Supreme Court, etc.) In addition to that, I think it’s fair to say that today’s Republican Party is different from Reagan’s only by degree, not kind.
The fact that Buckley has only now seen fit to part ways with the Party of Palin shows that his is a very limited objection. Did he vote for Bush twice? I assume he did. Surely, the prospect of a second Bush term was no less disturbing than the prospect of a McCain/Palin administration. OK, it might have been a bit less disturbing, but that may only be because we are almost rid of the Crawford Cretin and staring at the beginning of Palin’s reign of stupidity. When people refer to Palin as "Bush in a Skirt" they’re not far off. The truth about who is dumber, less articulate, meaner, more dangerous, etc. between Bush and Palin is a question we shouldn’t even have to contemplate, let alone answer. It’s more than a little disconcerting that after 8 years of the Worst President Ever, we are faced with a candidate who could conceivably wrest the title from Bush without breaking a sweat.
So, good for Buckley for publicly acknowledging just how low his party has sunk, but forgive me if I wonder if Buckley would have done the same thing had McCain been up 15 points in the latest polls.
Susan Fox
I’ve stayed in a yurt, which in Mongolia is called a "ger" and since the nomad families all live together with next to no privacy and nowhere else to go if someone gets in a snit when it’s -40F outside in the winter, they put a premium on restraint and self-control. I think you’re being unfair to gers. A ragged pup tent more like. ;-)
Best of luck to you! I’m a tree hugging California progressive but I always respected your father for his intellect and sense of humor.
Shade Tail
@oh really:
Exactly. I have a bit of respect for Buckley for actually being an intellectual, but he has always been a republican through and through. He was, at the very least, an enabler of all the worst abuses we’ve seen over the past 20 years.
The only difference, and I do mean the *only* difference, between Bush Jr. and Reagan is one of degree. Reagan had a modicum of restraint. He didn’t throw us head-long into an unwinnable war, and his trickle-down economic policies hadn’t already been proven to be failures.
But he still had the same corrupt, war-mongering, screw-the-poor attitude that Bush Jr. has been showing. The only difference is that Jr. has taken them to their logical conclusion.
When Buckley actually acknowledges his part in creating the GOP as it exists today, then he might be good for something other than another pro-Obama vote in November.
Dickie Moe
Yeah, I agree with Buckley in most of his writing on this, but there’s no way I would vote for someone who is 1000 times worse, just to say I voted.
He should sit this one out. To vote for something worse than what he’s complaining about is just idiotic.
boonagain
but, you see, he’s gonna vote for Obama who is 1000 times BETTER than McCain also.
You must be confused.
Krista
/passes Comrade Mary a nice cold Keith’s.
Yep, that’s my guess too. Do you think they’ll send Harper out to pasture for failing (for the third time) to close the deal?
Hob
Reagan was "not a warmonger" in the sense that he didn’t launch any full-scale invasions, but he certainly did his part to help other nations kill each other (Iran/Iraq) or wage war on their own populations (Latin America). He was a dangerous, destructive and dishonest man.
Mike G
It’s Trotskyites vs. Stalinists all over again
Exactly. Pull up a comfy chair and grab your popcorn, the Repig Purity Wars are about to begin. And no-one fights a purity war with more zeal than self-righteous Xtianists versus kill-for-a-dollar plutocrat market zealots.
charlotte
Bill Buckley, Christopher Buckley, whatever–and meh on both counts. Old Bill’s early racist theories were quickly forgotten it seems. And his son’s attempts at humour are leaden and puerile. These endless father and son acts are part of the problem in this country. I gather the NR’s personnel office must be quite busy these days.
And, honestly, the phrase "While I regret these developments, I am not in mourning … etc etc " leaves me queasy. Don’t let the door hit your pompous ass on the way out, dude.
Mike G
Christopher Buckley
Bill Kristol
Jonah Goldberg
Jon Podhoretz
Tucker Carlson
All the children of prominent pundit/wingnut welfare pimps. They know a good racket when they see it.
Talk about your "multiple generations on welfare".
The rightardosphere is such a meritocracy. And it shows.
oh really
I just wanted to add that Buckley must have spent the past sixteen years in a closet. How could he not know what the "modern conservative movement stands for?"
1. Gross incompetence.
2. Secret, corrupt governance.
3. Unprovoked war.
4. Enrichment of the wealthiest.
5. Impoverishment of the rest.
6. Transparently phony patriotism.
7. Having government run people’s lives on private matters (abortion, medical marijuana, birth control, etc.).
8. Having government ignore people whom it could help.
9. Despicable campaigns based on phony issues.
10. Pretending Ronald Reagan was a great president.
I’m too disgusted to go on, but you get the idea.
Badtux
Hey, don’t diss Catholic thought on evolution. Catholicism has not had a problem with evolution for over 100 years. For 100 years Catholicism’s policy on evolution has been clear: No opinion. "That’s science, and the Church doesn’t do science, the Church does faith." Thus the Catholic schools teach evolution in their Biology classes and don’t bother with literalism when talking Genesis in their theology classes, "this is a spiritual document, not a scientific document. It should be read for spiritual content, not scientific content" appears to be the deal there.
Seems they learned a *little* from that whole Galileo kurfuffle… which of course happened hundreds of years before these newfangled "evangelical" churches were founded a mere 150 or so years ago, practically no time at all in terms of the history of the Catholic Church.
Now, Catholic Church’s policy on *BIRTH CONTROL*, on the other hand… is just completely nuts. Logically consistent with the teachings of the Church for hundreds of years, but still nuts, all too obviously concocted by a buncha dudes wearing dresses with too much time on their hands (any woman in the bunch would have knocked some sense into the dudes with a skillet and gotten something sensible written into church law). Sooner or later the Church is going to have to do something about the fact that its teachings on birth control are utterly at odds with the realities of the modern world and figure out how to reconcile that with hundreds of years of theological thought. I figure it’ll take them another hundred years or so before that reconciliation manages to bubble up from beneath… the Church is extremely conservative, and likes to dot its i’s and cross its t’s before doing anything, and as a 1500 year old bureaucracy moves at about the pace of, well, a 1500 year old bureaucracy :-(.
Badtux
Grr… double-posting :-(.