The American Spectator

AmSpecBlog

Re: Buckley and Obama?

By W. James Antle, III on 10.8.08 @ 5:30PM

If Christopher Buckley does end up voting for Obama, he'll have flipped a bit in this election cycle too. In February, he took to the pages of the New York Times to defend John McCain from conservative critics. Specifically, Buckley said:

It may strike some conservatives today as odd, if not absurd, to see John McCain being subjected to an auto-da-fé conducted by such Torquemadas of the right as Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity. The other day, he even endured jeers at a conservative gathering in Washington, by otherwise well-behaved exemplars of conservatism. Indeed, turn on the TV at any hour of the day and you'll find Mr. McCain being excoriated in harsher terms than he endured from his jailers at the Hanoi Hilton - variously denounced as a) not conservative, b) really, really not conservative, or even c) so not-conservative as to make you wonder if he isn't just the latest re-issue of the Manchurian Candidate.

In response, let me offer a thoughtful, considered, carefully worded comment: Would you all please just...shut...up? (I'd insert an intensifier, but this is a family newspaper.)

Later on he was associated with this cast of characters (though he was already a Ron Paul donor by the time he wrote that pro-McCain op-ed, so perhaps he just likes his conservatives "mavericky"). Then again, if he was a Paul supporter and is contemplating becoming an Obamacon, he is probably less than enamored of neoconservative foreign policy. Many of us on the right who fit that description are good little Republicans during peacetime but find McCain types a little harder to support in times like these. I'd have voted for Rudy Giuliani in the 2000 Senate race too. This year, I would be more inclined to throw my vote away.

UPDATE: Dan McCarthy has more on the younger Buckley's Obamacon status. It's thoughtfulness as part of the politics of prudence.

topics:
Foreign Policy, John McCain, Conservatism