Victor Davis Hanson takes some names:
This is becoming a very strange campaign. On CNN this evening both David Gergen and Ed Rollins echoed the current mantra that the "old" noble McCain is gone, and a "new" nastier one has emerged, largely because of his attacks on Ayers, perhaps his planned future ads on Wright, and a few unhinged people shouting at his campaign stops. Recently Christopher Buckley endorsed Obama, likewise lamenting the loss of the old noble McCain. NY Times columnist David Brooks dubbed Palin a "cancer," and he suggested that Obama’s instant recall of Niehbuhr sent a tingle up his leg as Obama once did to Chris Matthews as well.
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Second, with Obama now with an 6-8 point lead, some in the DC/NY corridor these last three weeks figure it’s time now to jump on, or at least sort of jump, since the train they think is leaving the station and there might be still be some space at the dinner table on the caboose. They also believe as intellectuals that the similarly astute Obamians may on occasion inspire, or admire them as the like-minded who cultivate the life of the mind–in contrast to the "cancer" Sarah Palin, who, with her husband Todd, could hardly discuss Proust with them or could offer little if any sophisticated table-talk other than the chokes on shotguns or optimum RPMs on snow-machines.
[...]
Again, most conservatives know this paradox, but for some, being outraged as the conservative voice of reason, at McCain’s supposed low road ensures a CNN spot, or some future rehabilitation during the expected Obama regnum of the next eight years. I think should I write a column praising Obama’s wit, taste in books, and metrosexuality I would be dubbed principled rather than cynical, ‘even-handed’ rather than self-serving, and a maverick rather than toadish.
Yet for a self-acclaimed conservative to vote Obama would mean that higher taxes, larger government, more entitlements, more of a UN-centered foreign policy, dialogue with an Iran, less coal,oil, and nuclear energy production at home, more "oppression" studies and "reparations", leftish Supreme Court judges, open borders (I could go on) were the truly conservative positions, or perhaps suddenly truly the ‘right’ positions.
The USS McCain isn’t much of a ship, but it’s headed, for the most part, in the right direction—and Libertyblog remains lashed to the mast. (Via NRO Corner.)
