Say It Ain't So, Pup! Say It Ain't So!

Don't you just love all the mea culpas that conservative pundits --- as opposed to what Chris Buckley calls the "Right Wing Sanhedrin" --- are issuing now that McCain has so thoroughly drifted from his initial stance as a conservative libertarian?

I just caught that blog piece by Chris Buckley (son of the late, great William F.) where he indicated his support for Obama rather than McCain. Ironical, ain't it? In his blog piece he of course acknowledges his past support for McCain, even against the rabid dogs of the Right. But he is not alone. David Brooks of the NY Times is in the same boat.

Oh, and the reason he posted this was that he wanted to endorse Obama, mostly because he couldn't take it anymore. If you don't want to dirty your screen with right wing wanky web ads, I will quote you the significant part of his comment for me:

"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?"

What indeed? And sadly this is the position McCain's tactics have put most conservative thinkers (note ejaculators) are going through now. They finally got the candidate they really wanted, but after his going through the looking glass, he came out someone they could not recognize. And this is the essential truth: the heart of Republicanism has been ripped out of the GOP by reactionaries and the intellectual grandkinders of Reaganism. Reagan managed to convey conservatism without rancour, or spleen in most cases. And though John McCain was never a lambykins on any issue, he was always respectful and attentive to his opposites across the aisle, and would often be the first to work with them to right some wrong that was obvious. Not that he was my cup of tea, but at least he resembled the kind of Republicans I grew up with, and could respect.

Frankly, I think this shit would even make Nixon spin like a top. And he used to work for McCarthy.

Right now, the GOP is about as far from the 'party of Lincoln' as it has ever been. Are Nelson and Happy Rockefeller freakin' out in GOP Heaven? What do guys like Kissinger really feel? As a little kid, I helped out with local GOP campaigns back in Jersey, mostly because I knew Republicans who were good and decent people, who listened to us when we started to rant about Viet Nam.

These were the guys Eisenhower was talking to when he said "... we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex... Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

An alert and knowledgeable citizenry ... that's something the current thought-schtuping goose-steppers at the GOP are desperately trying to eliminate. And why they are losing their intellectual support so rapidly.

Perhaps losing the White House in 2008 will be the best thing that can happen for Republicans in a long time. The rational can get control of the party back, or at least help return the GOP to the dignity it once had. I'd like to think that some day, there might be a Republican candidate that even I could support for the office, simply because there should always be an alternative to extremisim. And I would like to think that the party of my father exists for some reason other than what it is demonstrating itself to be right now. Considering who we are really going to be up against politically, economically and strategically in the near future, it might be important to keep this in mind:

Like Spock said, quoting that old, old Vulcan proverb: "Only Nixon could go to China."

EDITOR'S NOTE: Sadly, Chris Buckley's tenure (though brief) has ended at the National Review with his offer of resignation to the Editor. Apparently, even the libertarian son of the FOUNDER of the National Review is not allowed to stray from the Grand Ol' Party Line. Oh well, he writes great books, so he's better off. Stinks of fascism, don't it?