..................Waaaaaahhhhhh!
Posted on 10/17/2008 11:08:54 AM PDT by XR7
Christopher Buckley ’75, co-founder of the Yale Daily News magazine and son of conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. ’50, resigned Saturday from his position as a columnist at National Review, the influential magazine his father founded five years after graduating from Yale.
The younger Buckley offered up his post to National Review editor Rich Lowry after Buckley’s Thursday endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama in an online news magazine elicited a wave of outrage from National Review readers.
“By Friday, I was Judas,” said Buckley in a telephone interview with the News on Tuesday night. “I thought the decent thing to do under the circumstances was to offer to resign, and they rather quickly took me up on my offer.”
Buckley’s endorsement — titled “Sorry, Dad, I’m Voting for Obama” — appeared Thursday on TheDailyBeast.com. In the piece, Buckley described his disapproval of the McCain campaign and the reasons for his surprising switch to Obama.
“Obama has in him … the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader,” Buckley wrote in the endorsement. “He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.”
National Review readers reacted immediately. In a Tuesday afternoon posting on The Daily Beast, Buckley described the flood of negative mail to National Review as a “700-1” landslide against his views.
“They got an avalanche of pissed-off mail,” Buckley said on the phone. “People saying, ‘He’s Judas, a Benedict Arnold, an asshole.’ ”
In a post on National Review’s Web site Tuesday afternoon, editor Rich Lowry denied Buckley’s claim that his column had sparked such a massive reaction.
“We have gotten about 100 e-mails, if that (a tiny amount compared to our usual volume), and threats of cancellations are in the single digits,” Lowry wrote.
Although his father would have adamantly opposed the endorsement, Buckley said, the elder Buckley would have responded rationally, rather than emotionally.
“He would let you say anything you had to say as long as it amounted to an argument,” said Buckley. “Then he would go after you and eviscerate you.”
But the elder Buckley may not have been opposed to an Obama presidency in the first place. In 1970, Buckley wrote an article for LOOK magazine entitled “Why We Need a Black President in 1980.” In it, he argued that a young black man, possibly rising from the ranks of politically active blacks in communities across America, could rise to prominence and challenge America’s “hypocrisy.”
The election of a black man, William Buckley wrote then, would be a “celebration of the ideals of a country which by this act alone would reassert its idealism.”
“It was a reminder of how unpredictable he was,” said his son. “That was one of the things that made WFB so damn interesting. He took unpredictable points of view.”
Buckley’s defection comes as an increasing number of moderate conservative pundits come out against the McCain-Palin ticket. Only three weeks ago, National Review columnist Kathleen Parker sparked a storm of controversy by calling for Republican vice-presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin’s resignation. But the columns’ impacts may ultimately be washed out in the flood of media coverage surrounding trouble on Wall Street, which many pundits say has boosted Obama’s prospects.
“The financial crisis has been almost definitive,” said diplomat-in-residence Charles Hill, a former foreign policy advisor to Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign. “I think Obama is out in front and almost certainly will stay there.”
Buckley cited the nomination of Palin as another turning point in the McCain candidacy.“I initially swooned over Sarah Palin,” he said. “And then she started talking.”
Buckley has written the back-page column for the National Review since June of this year and will be sad to bid farewell to the magazine, he said.
“I love the National Review. It’s the magazine my dad created and I will always be fond of it,” Buckley said.
Yet he does not feel regret, he said. “I’m pretty confident I did not betray my father’s ghost,” he said. “I will sleep soundly tonight.”
If they could harness dad’s spin rate for electricity, it could power New York
I used to fly a lot with Ron Jr. I was chating with him in the airport about this and that....but I asked him about his dad once and he just turned stone cold...end of conversation. Total jacka$$.
I believe that these pundits see Obama ushering in a new era of socialism for the next few decades and they want to be on the inside rather than the outside. It's more fun to be attending cocktail parties than being the voice crying out in the wilderness
Is he a friend of Dorthoy as in Judy Garland?
By pointing out that NR accepted his resignation offer “rather quickly,” Buckly betrays the fact that he had meant his offer in vain, as a cosmetic gesture, a bluff.
Now he hypocritically complains that his bluff was called.
..................Waaaaaahhhhhh!
I hope so, that would provide some rationale to the philosophical idiocy.
You took fifteen paragraphs to call these conservative turncoats damned snobs?
Yep, that isn’t a very comforting observation either. This nation is so adrift. Give me one good Palin, and we could change the world.
2012 can’t come fast enough.
“Buckley’s defection comes as an increasing number of moderate conservative pundits come out against the McCain-Palin ticket.”
There is no such thing as a “moderate conservative”. You’re either conservative or you’re not. Saying that you’re a moderate conservative is like saying that you’re only partially pregnant. There is no gray area where conservatism is concerned.
1) You never were a conservative, but just made your living fooling conservatives
2) You are really unintelligent to let Obama fool you. If that's the case, you don't deserve to be a commentator.
3) Your social standing matters more than your principles.
Like I said, I don't care whether you vote for/support Obama, but if you cared at all for the conservative movement and had serious disagreements with the party's nominees you would keep your mouth shut and vote as you wished. The conservative movement is more than just the top of the ticket and your silly attempt to demoralize Republicans damages all down-ticket races. But, my inclination is to believe that the conservative movement really doesn't matter, and your announcements were totally self-serving. (Of course, maybe I'm just an ignorant rube because I support McCain/Palin, thinking that the principles of an imperfect Republican outshine those of an eloquent Marxist any day).
Excellent catch! Great post!
Ron Reagan Jr doing an impression of Carol Burnett at his father's funeral.
I had already decided to let my subscription lapse after this year, they ran cover after cover and story after story featuring Obama — when they should have been promoting conservative frontrunners for the primaries and grooming up-and-comers for the pipeline to 2012. They have become a caricature of "Tennis, anyone?" pseudo-Britishism circa 1936.
Will he take up dance and move to Seattle like Ronald Reagan Jr.?
Outstanding.
No conservative could even consider endorsing a socialist “New Party” far-left “progressive” mole like Obama. Ergo, Chris Buckley is no conservative and should not be associated with NR.
Same goes for Kathleen Parker, Peggy Noonan, and any other fools who are trying to help get Obama elected.
caveat: I can at least understand the arguments of real conservatives who recognize what Obama represents but hope for a Reagan-like reaction against 1 term of Obama.... though I think that’s much too risky a course for a variety of reasons. Still, I can at least understand conservatives who want to advocate the Carter-to-Reagan scenario.
But I can’t begin to understand anyone who pretends to be conservative yet wants to boost Obama and/or tear down Sarah Palin (which are two sides of the same coin, two related tactics).
Happy to know he is sleeping soundly tonight.
Is his bastard son who he ignores and refuses to act as a father doing the same?
What a jerk.
Clearly, its very hard to follow in the footsteps of a national icon.
And worse to fail on any moral grounds to even follow that reasonable path.
This poor man is completely lost and adrift of any sound rudder.
His poor dad must be trying to reach him even now. To no affect now as then.
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