The Christopher Buckley affair and conservatism's future

I think accepting Christopher Buckley's resignation was a mistake. I think Rich Lowery had an opportunity to be magnanimous and broad minded, and Mr. Lowery punted the opportunity.

I was a supporter of Gov. Huckabee in the primaries and National Review could find nary a kind word to say about Gov. Huckabee. There was even one outrageous comment suggesting Mr. Huckabee go to the local bait shop. What a cheap shot I thought. Jonah Goldberg has advocated surrender in the protection of marriage issue, but I still read him. I still read the Corner in spite of the strong anti-Huckabee sentiment. Jonah is a smart guy and he has an interesting take even if I do not always agree with him, and the same is true of National Review more generally.

Why do disagreements and discussions matter? I think David Brooks’ recent points about Gov. Palin have been misplaced. All the things he said are true but apply to Pres. Bush, not Gov. Palin. She showed intellectual curiosity and courage in finding corruption and taking on her own party in Alaska. Her convention speech was better delivered than any speech I have ever heard Pres. Bush give. In eight years, I have seen no noticeable improvement in Pres. Bush’s public speaking ability. This reality is the result of arrogance and a lack of rigor. This lack of rigor has been frequently displayed in Pres. Bush’s decisions, especially in the personnel area – e.g. Alberto Gonzalez and Harriet Miers. Peggy Noonan was right when she said Pres. Bush has destroyed the GOP, although destroy maybe a bit too strong. We do not need to make the same mistakes if the Republicans go down to defeat, and I do not think defeat is inevitable. We need to be rigorous in our debate in the weeks, months, and (sigh) years to come. I am not of the libertarian ilk like Christopher Buckley nor do I always agree with Jonah Goldberg or Rod or any one else, but I certainly can learn from all of you. We, as conservatives, have some soul searching to do after the Bush presidency.

Whatever the outcome of the election, I believe that conservatives need to go seriously after the middle class. Both parties currently promise a lot to them, but fail to deliver. If conservatives of the Bobby Jindal and Mike Huckabee variety were to start appealing to middle class concerns in a grassroots manner, the Right could make significant gains in ensuing years. And it's important to note that it's not 'conservatism' that has failed here, but the neocon synthesis. It will probably take a conscious distancing from that for the middle class to regain the trust in the Right that it had during the Reagan years.

It may be true that an Obama presidency would make for an exciting time to be a conservative, but who cares? It will be bad for the country. While the Republican party spends years in the wilderness Obama will be inflicting irreparable damage. If the end result of the years in the wilderness is a stronger conservatism that can elect a president, that's still not good enough. The conservative victories of the Reagan years and 1994 were not able roll back Roe v. Wade, Social Security, the Department of Education, etc. It won't be possible to roll back Obama's expansion of government either.

If McCain wins will it really be bad for the conservative movement?

Is it true that in 1955 WFB said that it was okay for Whites to discriminate against Blacks because Blacks were inferior?

I read that somewhere, wanted to know it it was true.

This really is silly; we don't know for sure the circumstances of Mr. Buckley's departure from NR, but I'd rather read Mark Steyn anyway. Christopher Buckley is indeed successful in his own right, and it is well-deserved. But the idea that he is - or was - some sort of vanguard of the conservative movement because he is WFB's son is downright ludicrous.

Before this year I had no idea he even endorsed candidsates for president. I'm no more interested in his pick than, say, the picks of Ronald Reagan's children.

"Voters who cared more about abortion than torture, fiscal responsibility, the war, and corruption gave cover to the Establishment. In an effort to get two pro-life justices, social conservatives turned a blind-eye to the movement's problems, acting as the stormtroopers for the effort."

Not entirely true. Religious conservatives do have to accept some of the blame, but it is not so much that they turned a blind eye, as it is that they were hoodwinked into buying what the establishment conservatives sold them. Voices that were raised in protest were either not loud enough or not numerous enough to gain their attention, and in any case were often squelched by those on the establishment Right.

As usual, Daniel, your efforts to pin the blame for everything on pro-lifers fall far short of the mark. I wonder what prompts this knee-jerk reaction in you? Could it be that you're in rebellion against your own Church's teachings on the thing and you're projecting? Naw, couldn't be that.....

"As usual, Daniel, your efforts to pin the blame for everything on pro-lifers fall far short of the mark. I wonder what prompts this knee-jerk reaction in you? Could it be that you're in rebellion against your own Church's teachings on the thing and you're projecting? Naw, couldn't be that....."

Thanks for that armchair analysis. Now you can get back to enabling the establishment, like the girlfriend of a crack addict handing him the pipe in order to get a dozen flowers at the end of the month.

"Now you can get back to enabling the establishment"

Don't pay attention much, do you? For the past two years I've been posting here I've been critical of the establishment Right.

A few years back, I found myself riding in a car with some conservative greybeards who were talking about the early days at National Review, when WFB published writers of the Right who disagreed, sometimes sharply, with each other. The idea, they said, was to bring the sharpest, most creative minds of the countercultural (in those days) Right into the pages of the magazine to create a vital and viable future for authentic conservatism (as distinct from whatever it was that the GOP of the day was peddling).

Say, did those graybeards talk with nostalgia about the nakedly racist cartoons NR ran in the late 50s against school desegregation? Communists plotting to fluoridate our drinking water were not as great a threat to the Republic in National Review's eyes as were black kids with their nappy hair, small craniums and fat lips mingling with our precious white children.

Seriously, Rod, pull some of the microfilms of random issues from say 1957 or 1959. Or even 1963. And just peruse them. The Golden Age of NR as imagined by those graybeards also featured some of the earliest examples of Holocaust denial to see mass print, spirited defenses of the most discredited McCarthy allegations, and still more venom about The Negro.

Daniel: Thanks for that armchair analysis. Now you can get back to enabling the establishment, like the girlfriend of a crack addict handing him the pipe in order to get a dozen flowers at the end of the month.

Oooh, sounds like Erin's got somebody's number!

You will find on this site plenty of criticism of the Right and the GOP Establishment, from the Right. What you will search in vain for is Daniel ever criticizing anything the liberals and the Democrats do. And yet, he's death on how mindlessly devoted conservatives supposedly are to their political affiliates. Amazing.

"Oooh, sounds like Erin's got somebody's number!"

Yeah, that Erin's a smart one, hiding out in her bunker.

Daniel: Yeah, that Erin's a smart one, hiding out in her bunker.

I love it! Among Erin's many gifts is an uncanny ability to bring out your utter humorlessness.

Hah! That was actually my post. I must say that not only have I never been anyone's girlfriend, I haven't dressed in women's clothes for a very long time.

Still, glad to see that I have the same positive qualities as Erin does regarding Leftist panty-bunching.

I feel sorry for Christopher Buckley in the way I do for many children of powerful figures. Forever in the shadow of "Daddy" and constantly looking for a way to assert their identity and independence. We've seen this with JFK and his father, the sons of FDR, Ronnie Reagan (former ballet dancer and son of the 40th President), Al Gore, Jr. and (we dare not omit mentioning) even "W".

Just recently I saw an interview of the younger Buckley on C-Span2 (Book TV) and sensed an unhappy man struggling under the weight of a famous name. He suffers from a number of distracting nervous ticks and appeared in the interview to be heading for a breakdown. I suspect this "break" with NR and the conservative movement will be personally liberating for him. Something, perhaps, he wanted to do but never dared while WFB, Jr. was alive. He is also dealing with a lot of personal struggles, including a lawsuit from the mother of his child out of wedlock and separation from his wife (with whom he has two children).

I read his essay when it came out a week ago. Much of the reasons he gave for supporting Obama seemed half-hearted and barely serious. But he let the "cat out of the bag," so to speak, when he admitted his libertarian leanings and concluded that the issues dear to social conservatives don't mean ANYTHING to him. Obama's extremism on the abortion issue, for example, is no obstacle for Christopher Buckley as it is for so many conservatives who comment here on "crunchy con."

We should all wish the younger Buckley well as he moves on with his life. His endorsement of Obama, however, is meaningless to conservatism in this country.

The NeoCons combined with Rapture evangelicals IMO are responsible for the Iraq war. As far back as 1994-95 after the GOP took both houses of congress Irving Kristol made his big play for Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition. I Remember a spat between Ralph Reed and William Kristol on this Week with David Brinkley. Kristol was a regular on the show back then. By 2000 the younger Kristol convinced McCain to go out and attack the Pat Robertson Jerry Farwell intolerance wing of the GOP. Soon after Gary Bauer endorses McCain. I read somewhere, can't remember the idea was to install Bauer as the titular head of Evangelical Christians. Of course Bauer is a close family friend of the younger Kristol.

I know. Ya Da Ya Da. . But that is a pretty accurate history of events.

While I think you're largely right, Rod, I have to take issue with one statement: "It was not religious conservatives who brought us the war in Iraq."

Seriously? I was told by numerous evangelical friends that this was a war against evil, and that to speak against it is to speak against Christ himself. The few religious figures who spoke out against the war early on were totally vilified by evangelical conservatives in the GOP. It is quite true that figures outside the country were quite united in their condemnation of our invasion of Iraq (including two successive popes, the archbishop of Canterbury, and a number of Orthodox leaders). But inside the bubble, it's hard to make the case that religious conservatives are not partly to blame for our fiasco in the middle east.

Fr. J is right, too.

The evangelical right got caught up with the war, associating W with God's cause. Interestingly, Pat Robertson didn't support the war. But most of his flock did.

Daniel,

Your sense of the generic parameters of blogs is equally as blinkered as your strange "Catholic" morality, which seems to involve regarding each day's set of Democratic squawking points as an encyclical straight from the Pope -- but, then, you don't care jack-squat what the Pope, as opposed to the Reverend, has to say, so I suppose my metaphor is inapt.

Anyway, blogs consist as much of the conversation kicked off my the posts as they do of the posts themselves -- especially on *this* blog, where only a minority of readers share Rod's own point of view.

So, for you to claim that you -- the best of all "good Catholics" never criticize, Democrats, never criticize liberals, never criticize leftists, never criticize the "new" atheist Gob-bashers and Christophobes, *only* because of the generic norms of discourse on blogs restrain you from doing so is just *beyond* a hoot ... or a hoot only in the sense that your utter rigidity of mind and utter your constipation of soul result in an unceasing deadpan dourness and morbidity that conjures -- if only accidentally -- the humor possessed by a Buster Keaton silent film or a Samuel Beckett play.

Thanks for your insight, Rufus. Who needs confession or therapy with all the armchair analysis offered here in Crunchy world.

To add to Reaganite-

Chris Buckley was recently featured in the New York's news dailies as a man who had fathered a child out of wedlock, thereby ending his marriage to the mother of his 2 older children. Further, he apparently has made a point of having no relationship whatsoever with the boy, who lives in Florida with his mother. Suspect that growing up in his dad's shadow was probably not wine&roses, and that while Chris Buckley is a good writer, he appears to be an unhappy man.

To add to Rufus-we need Paul or someone like him to get back to our constitutional ideals. It's awful we've had this economic crisis, but a shame we didn't have it about 8 months ago(assuming it was going to happen anyway).We'd have had a far different and more substantive primary campaign.

Re: C Buckley and K Parker... Good riddance to bad and snobbish elitist chatterers.

The moment those who consider themselves superior to the "vulgar" ordinary person talk about how they need to be removed, they lost it. Not only do they fail the sniff test, it is their self-measured superiority that reeks of crass rage.

I'm sorry, but these people are not so much smarter or wiser, or anything else. Anyone who says:

"Radical conservatives are still having an interesting time of it, though these days they are being mutilated by fellow “conservatives.” The well-fed Right now cultivates ignorance as a political strategy and humiliates itself when its brightest sons seek sanctuary in the solitude of personal honor."

Is both ignorant and foolish.

She's gotten so full of herself, and her rarified air peers that she's now convinced the game is about her and them, and not about a nation of people. Which is nothing other than the Obamaton crowd with different policy stances. They really DO think it's about Obama, which is why they care not about what he wants.

When they confuse rejecting elitism as superior with "ignorance as a policy", then they're no more honest than Obama or Gore.

This isn't leadership. This isn't even thinking, this is crass emotionalism, spit out in anger at those who rightly perceive her and Buckley's rejection of "them" as worthy people.

Notice that Noonan and Buckley and Parker reject Palin for the same reason Rod does... She doesn't policy wonk. No long speeches on the nuances of the branches of economic schools of thought, or the social impacts of deviancy redefinitions. Why, she must be an imbecile, if she can't or doesn't want to do that.

Of course, there's perhaps 1% of the population (including both conservative and liberal) who find that stuff particularly intellectually fulfilling. The rest of us find such indulgences rather boring. And of course, we're not invited to the party, because of that.

Nope, the working class simply internalizes what they believe about economics and social issues and treats it just like they do everything else in thier life. If you're a mechanic, you look at the car, see the fault, apply the fix, and move on. No lectures on the philosophy of engineering needed. And like Palin, lecturing us on her philosophy of governance is as foreign an idea as sacraficing an arm to art. It would be an act of arrogance to lecture the voters on how to think.

And the observant react... "Gee, someone with a brain... Someone who realizes that DOING is what matters." And some just react instinctively to what they know instinctively.

Of course, there's the dour wanna-be elites who're going to assume she's dumb, incurious, closed-minded, or shallow. The rest of us would just like to hand them some tools and give them a job for a while... how long, I don't know. But long enough to realize that practical minds exceed the accomplishment of the theoretical in the world of the practical and real, by a factor of (Charitably) a billion to one.

But yet, the Buckleys and Parkers whine on that these people aren't following them anymore. Well, duhh. They're not leading. They're berating our ordinariness, telling us we're the cancer in "their" movement.

Oh hell no. It's not your movement, you twits. It's OUR life we want to defend here, and you're still stuck on the debates over philosophical minutae. No wonder we're not following you. Quit the angst over the impurities in the people and TRY LEADING THEM for once. You know, like those people in both our recent and long past did.

Rufus Thomas and I haven't been talking to each other lately, and I have to admit I don't usually agree with what you have to say, Rufus. You don't need to reply, but "Democratic squawking points" made me laugh so hard I almost spit out my iced tea. Thanks!

Daniel: Maybe if I affect a Louisiana accent when I'm making a joke, you'll understand when I'm trying to be funny.

Wouldn't it be easier to, like, actually be funny?

Alicia,

Glad to be of service.

Now, if your iced tea was *sweetened,* then all is forgiven.

Actually, all is forgiven even if it's not.

Hope it's the same on your end.

; )

"What you will search in vain for is Daniel ever criticizing anything the liberals and the Democrats do."

Being a liberal means never having to say you're sorry (or you're wrong).

Quinn's Law #10: Liberals never think what they've done is wrong; they only think they haven’t done enough of it yet, or it is underfunded.

Rod, your excellent closing points of light illuminate one very real problem for the conservative movement and the GOP. When WFB, 50 years ago, welcomed contrasting points of view, there was a cultural premium placed upon learning. (Contrast with Palin’s ‘cultural warrior’ base) Today, many of those wielding clout within your party… what you’re calling the 'religious' wing… sees no learning necessary beyond the Bible. There lies a rub potent enough to season a slab of ribs.

I get the feeling that you are not exposing yourself the religious wing that I see on Channel 2 (Daystar) and CBN (21) vs. what you read, see and hear in church, examine online and in personal social life interaction. For anyone to be thinking that the so-called 'religious right' within the GOP is a like-minded monolith is naive on a good day, clueless on a bad one. And they claim to have elected GWB. This is no small part of the disaffection I see and hear around me when the subject of GOP defections come up.