When Conservatives Vote Left
Posted on October 29th, 2008
by Daniel McCarthy |
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We didn’t have any Ralph Nader endorsements in our election symposium. But if you’re looking for a conservative case for him, you could hardly do better than to consult the Northern Agrarian (former TAC intern Patrick Ford) and the Left Conservative (Dylan Hales, who has a forthcoming TAC piece on William Appleman Williams and Gabriel Kolko).
I was also interested to see that an old friend of mine from college — we co-founded a conservative publication at Washington University in St. Louis — is supporting Obama. He relays a wise election recommendation from a mutual friend:
The best advice I have received concerning choosing a candidate or a party was from a good friend and colleague of mine. He once said that he couldn’t see himself voting for someone if he couldn’t see himself associating with his supporters. For me, I couldn’t see myself hanging out with the zealous halfwits that supported Vice President Al Gore in 2000 or Kerry in 2004. Now, thanks to the xenophobic frenzy that the McCain-Palin campaign has stirred up - I wouldn’t be caught dead in a GOP rally.
That’s something that has made Obamacons out of many right-leaning Americans. And speaking of Obamacons, I notice that Christopher Buckley is not the only dissenter from the party line to be purged from National Review. Jeffrey Hart, who has been an NR senior editor for longer than most of NR’s editors have been alive, is for Obama and so, like Buckley, he has been shown the door.
Filed under: Conservatism, Election
Xenophobic frenzy is a bad thing? I think McCain could have used a little xenophobia during his last term in the senate. Perhaps he wouldn’t have supported the amnesty.
It bugs me that the ‘racism’ in question is anti-muslim and stoked by the neocons (frontpagemag, Obsession and the WWIV crowd at NR), but it may be the paleocons that the blame.
None of the ugly behavior is directed at the immigration problem. The paleocons are keeping very civil. If anything, it is the left that is acting fascistic on that issue.
Thanks for the comments. Rob: I think the xenophobia in question actually refers to foreign policy, rather than immigration. And I think you’re right, daveg — the neocons are going to try to pivot and blame the nastiness of the McCain campaign on paleos, even though it has nothing to do with our issues (quite the contrary). The bad guys are very good at mixing up the cultural appeal of the paleos — as seen in Palin and some of the anti-socialist, “little guy” rhetoric of the McCain campaign — with the establishment’s program. They steal some of the firm right’s momentum, but if they lose, they blame the symbolic paleo elements for the defeat. And of course, the establishment media perpetuates the narrative.