blogger interrupted

Not all Republicans are insane lunatics.  Just 99%.  Especially today, as the bedraggled rump of the GOP, i.e., inbred neanderthal bigots which make up the entirety of McCain Palin crowds, proves on a daily basis.

The remaining 1% are the likes of Christopher Buckley, son of the sainted founder of the conservative movement itself, William F. Buckley.  Son Christopher still wrote for his father’s bible of conservatism, the National Review.  Until yesterday.

Christopher Buckley knew he was venturing into treacherous territory when he endorsed Barack Obama: “It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup are no longer alive. They’d cut off my allowance,” he wrote.

The penalty turned out to be more severe. William F. Buckley Jr.’s son said today he had lost his back-page column in the conservative bible founded by his father, National Review.

“Within hours, poor NR was being swamped with furious mail, ‘Cancel my subscription, this is betrayal, Judas, Benedict Arnold,’ ” Buckley said in an interview. “I thought the decent thing to do would be to offer to resign the column. Well, they accepted it.” 

He’d been fatwah’d.

Mr. Buckley said he had “been effectively fatwahed by the conservative movement” after endorsing Barack Obama…Mr. Buckley said he did not understand the sense of betrayal that some of his conservative colleagues felt, but said that the fury and ugly comments his endorsement generated is “part of the calcification of modern discourse. It’s so angry.” Paraphrasing Ronald Reagan’s quote about the Democrats, Mr. Buckley added, “I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.”

The best part, though, is that Buckley still owns a share of the publication, so all the subscribers who now despise him are still giving him their money.  Irony, meet irony.

The problem for reasonable conservatives, and there are a few, is thus.  You either leave Republicanism’s fetid swamp now, risking total demonization by the mob.  Or.  You stick around, go down with this ship, and engage in an internecine blood bath for the foreseeable future, perhaps years, even decades.  Smart conservatives like Buckley are jumping ship.  I would imagine that George Will may be next at some point.  

Buckley, Will, Christopher Hitchens, and precious few others, are the final remaining intellectuals in conservative Republicanism.  Such people are so rare as to be oddities now, but they give, and have given, Republicanism its preposterous veneer of “thought“.  That veneer is now so thin as to be invisible to the naked eye, a pair of binoculars, or the Hubble space telescope.  It is about to be completely vaporized into the cosmos, destroyed not by voters, or Democrats, but by the coming civil war on the right.

If they are smart, these remaining reasonable human beings will make it known, before Nov. 4, that they are voting for Barack Obama.  If they don’t, and they are forced to vote for, and SAY they voted for, John McCain, they will be road kill.  

Welcome aboard the O-Train, Chris.  There’s plenty of room for you.  We’ve booked you a place in the dining car complete with a seat for your father’s dignity, which you have just saved.