Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting for Obama (Christopher Buckley)

The Daily Beast ^ | 10/10/2008 | Christopher Buckley

[Numbers Guy]

Let me be the latest conservative/libertarian/whatever to leap onto the Barack Obama bandwagon. It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup are no longer alive. They’d cut off my allowance.

Or would they? But let’s get that part out of the way. The only reason my vote would be of any interest to anyone is that my last name happens to be Buckley—a name I inherited. So in the event anyone notices or cares, the headline will be: “William F. Buckley’s Son Says He Is Pro-Obama.” I know, I know: It lacks the throw-weight of “Ron Reagan Jr. to Address Democratic Convention,” but it’ll have to do.

I am—drum roll, please, cue trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast (what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column. For a reason: My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”

[SargeK]

I just did, and I urge everyone else to also.

This is about the battle between the conservative and the congenitally rich country club wings of the party, and this is the battle we must win first, or we will have no place to stand.

[DemforBush]

“The best thing about Sarah Palin is that she is the fastest way to drive the country club Republicans out of the party. They’ve long been captured by secular intellectuals.”

You know, I’ve been thinking along those same lines. The Republicans who have been slamming Palin hardest seem mostly to be part of the “blue blood” wing of the GOP. This suggests to me that its less about her abilities and much more about not being “their kind of people.”

That only makes me more determined to support her, btw. I have about as much use for cocktail party circuit Republicans as I do with the likes of John Kerry and Ted Kennedy.

[NYC_BULLMOOSE]

Very sad — Bill Buckley is rightly (pun intended) a hero of the American Conservative Movement...

His son is an embarrassment to the family, he is the father of an illegitimate son conceived during an adulterous affair.

Worse, he refuses to pay child support or to have anything to do with the child and his mother (he has a restraining order preventing the child & mom from contacting him). He almost certainly pushed the mom to have an abortion (thusly - it is rumored - causing a serious rift with his father) the mother/mistress choose to have the baby anyway and Chris Buckley behaves as if the child doesn't exist.

WFB2 was a gentleman and class-act in every way... his son is something else entirely.

[andy58-in-nh]

45 years ago, National Review's founder and editor made a decision to purge the magazine of what he considered to be intellectually unsavory elements on the Right: John Birchers, Randians, Gold-bugs and the like. William F. Buckley did so not in order to enforce a stringent orthodoxy on the Conservative movement of which he made his magazine an integral part, but to make it more respectable by removing the voices of the hyperbolic, the shrill and the intellectually limited.

Perhaps it is time for his successors-in-interest to purge the magazine and its on-line companion of the equally unsavory elements who have over time found a home there; specifically, the elitist urban haute-bourgeoisie types who all went to the same prep schools, wear the same designer clothes, frequent the same bistros, and live in the same rent-controlled enclaves in Manhattan.

These people are to my ears increasingly indistinguishable from their liberal cohorts in their choice of interests and attitudes, and it is no surprise that they see qualities in Barack Obama that resonate powerfully with them. He is essentially one of them. A flinty Arizonan war hero and an Alaskan hockey mom do nothing for them because they do not know, have never known and will never know people like that anywhere in the cool cloisters of their privileged lives.

Buckley, Sr. was presumed by many to be a natural elitist by virtue of his upbringing, and in some ways he certainly was, but from what I have seen and read, he lived a life of exceptional variety and identified well with people of backgrounds and interests far different from his own. The fact that he wrote about them convincingly is proof enough.

It would likely make WFB sad to have to kick his own son off the team, so to speak, but he loved his magazine dearly and and was fiercely protective of it. In my opinion, the current editor ought to decide how much he loves it, too.

[Sig Sauer P220]

I didn’t realize William F. had a gay son.

[LibLieSlayer]

Reagan had one too... and he is voting for osamabama. My two posts stating this using another word were deleted.

LLS

[takenoprisoner]

“Funny enough, he worked for Ron Paul’s campaign and they claimed it was proof they had Buckley’s legacy.”

Just goes to show ya! Pres. Bush most likely assumed he had the Buckley legacy in the wrapper too when Christopher Buckley was a speechwriter for him.

[Numbers Guy]

These people are to my ears increasingly indistinguishable from their liberal cohorts in their choice of interests and attitudes, and it is no surprise that they see qualities in Barack Obama that resonate powerfully with them. He is essentially one of them. A flinty Arizonan war hero and an Alaskan hockey mom do nothing for them because they do not know, have never known and will never know people like that anywhere in the cool cloisters of their privileged lives.

Dang, that is so dead on, a brilliant observation.

I've always respected C Buckley's writing, but I've always sensed that he was at best a political moderate who was trying not to offend conservatives. He proclaimed his atheism years ago, and it's not the Rand-type rationalist style atheism but more the "religion is icky" type atheism.

Hang out with the cocktail party set and you eventually get sucked in, I guess . . . let's not forget his little urination match with Tom Clancy after Clancy's Jack Ryan/Japan book. Like many elitists, he doesn't understand people who didn't get into the best schools. They're inferiors and, look, wheeee, Obama's an Ivy Leaguer, he's ONE OF US!!!

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

There’s no “if” about it now. Buckley’s a certifiable fool.

[nickcarraway]

All the Republicans who don’t like Palin can stick it. They might as well vote for Obama, because they are obviously uncomfortable with anything that is “too different” from a Democrat.

[nickcarraway]

All the Republicans who don’t like Palin can stick it. They might as well vote for Obama, because they are obviously uncomfortable with anything that is “too different” from a Democrat.

[nyc1]

“A year ago, when everyone, including the man I’m about to endorse, was caterwauling to get out of Iraq on the next available flight, John McCain, practically alone, said no, no—bad move. Surge. It seemed a suicidal position to take, an act of political bravery of the kind you don’t see a whole lot of anymore.”

Like McCain or not, his support for the surge alone proves that he has the sort of political courage that Obama’s never demonstrated. 18% of the public supported the surge, and it was generally believed that McCain backing it would send his campaign down in flames.

When has Obama taken a political position like that? When has he ever even gone against his party? Or shown an ability to reach across the aisle?

I’ve never heard a bigger load of crap in my life than this BS about Obama being the leader we need.

And Buckley’s brain damaged if he doesn’t think Obama will be governing from the left.

[hoyaloya]

A “Buckley” supports the establishment?

It’ll make some news, but is it really news? Where did he grow up? What schools did he go to? Who did his family hang out with?

Palin represents everything the people Buckley and Brooks are surrounded by loathe and look down upon. It would only be natural for them to say ... “see, its the Palins of the world that have messed the conservative movement up.”

The idea loses traction when one considers that absent the Palins of the world, there would be no more conservative movement ... except in lecture halls and books.

The “conservatism” Brooks and Buckley want is akin to the conservatism of Tory England. Unprincipled, fringe, and begging for scraps. But welcomed in their cigar clubs on the Upper East Side.

[nathanbedford]

A very good post, Jim because you go to the heart of Buckley's weakness and proved that his thinking is so fatuous that even he himself cannot possibly be persuaded by his own argument.

Clearly, the explanation for his declension lies elsewhere. The first is quite obvious, he is an atheist who is reacting viscerally to the religiosity of Sarah Palin. She does have this effect on puerile egotists like Mr. Buckley not because he is incompetent and a threat if she should become president but because she is a living reproach to all that Mr. Buckley holds dear. His reaction, as you demonstrate in your post, departs so far from logic that it must be purely emotional, and so it is.

The second, is admittedly a reach on my part. I think Mr. Buckley is making a new place for himself in the New World Order. I think he sees the end of conservatism and the dawning of the new world order imposed upon us by Obama. Buckley is at home in the salons of Manhattan, Boston and Georgetown and he knows that conservatism is to be exiled into the wilderness from which it may not emerge in his lifetime, if ever. Buckley, who professes to admire McCain's personal courage and his willingness to go it alone for principle against all odds, has himself hypocritically gone over to the dark side to protect his exalted status.

[hoyaloya]

Ok, so we’ve said the same thing ... you’ve just said it better than I did!

[Lancey Howard]

Without cheating and doing any research, let me guess that Christopher is a little light in the loafers?

[alaskamomma]

is there a reason why I’m suppose to give a rats behind.

[Lancey Howard]

Okay, the guy is married and has children - - just like Jim McGreevey.
Maybe the guy is simply a mindless pantload. In any event, he is an embarrassment who has disgraced the Buckley name. As soon as Buckley cited those other two country club snots, Kathleen Parker and David Brooks, I knew where he was coming from - - a circle jerk.