defrog | Oct. 17th, 2008

You may or may not have heard that Christopher Buckley – son of William F – has endorsed Obama over McCain, and that he was forced to quit his post at the National Review – which William Buckley founded – as a result.

Both his columns explaining why he’s voting Democrat for the first time in his life and why he quit NR are worth reading – not just because of his eloquent and sensible arguments against McCain and for Obama, but because of his spot-on assessment of the state of both NR and the GOP:

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.

He also has some choice words for NR readers who sent him all that vitrolic hate mail who accuse him of betraying his father’s ideals:

William F. Buckley held to rigorous standards, and if those were met by members of the other side rather than by his own camp, he said as much. My father was also unpredictable, which tends to keep things fresh and lively and on-their-feet. He came out for legalization of drugs once he decided that the war on drugs was largely counterproductive. Hardly a conservative position. Finally, and hardly least, he was fun. God, he was fun. He liked to mix it up.

Indeed. I grew up watching Buckley on Firing Line, and while I didn’t always agree with him, I’d never accuse him of being dull or an idiot (mostly). Who else would title a collection of letters he sent to irate NR readers Cancel Your Own Goddamn Subscription?

But people like him (and his son, and people like PJ O’Rourke) are few and far between in these days where where political discourse (at least in the media) has devolved from reasoned and civil (if animated and a little heated) to name-calling and cries of “Traitor!”

And that’s just the dingbats in John McCain’s audience. Official GOP spokespeople are running off the goddamn end of the Earth with the “Obama is Teh Terrors” number, from robocalls saying “Obama pals around with the TERRORIST Bil Ayers” to the chairman of the Virginia Republican Party saying Obama and bin Laden "both have friends that bombed the Pentagon" (though he now claims he was just parroting Limbaugh, as if that makes it okay).

To say nothing of things like this classy number from the Sacramento County Republican Party:

Would Bill Buckley approve? I doubt it. But then he’s one of those elitist intellectuals that Republicans claim to hate on general principle. Ironic, no?

Stop making sense,

This is dF