A Hitch In Time

By Cernig

Christopher Hitchens is just the latest in a line of right-of-center types to reject the McCain-Palin formula for American conservativism, but, oh boy, does he do it in no-holds-barred style. Writing in an essay simply titled "Vote For Obama", he says that "McCain lacks the character and temperament to be President and Palin is simply a disgrace".

On "the issues" in these closing weeks, there really isn't a very sharp or highly noticeable distinction to be made between the two nominees, and their "debates" have been cramped and boring affairs as a result. But the difference in character and temperament has become plainer by the day, and there is no decent way of avoiding the fact. Last week's so-called town-hall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience. McCain occasionally remembers to stress matters like honor and to disown innuendoes and slanders, but this only makes him look both more senile and more cynical, since it cannot (can it?) be other than his wish and design that he has engaged a deputy who does the innuendoes and slanders for him.

...

The most insulting thing that a politician can do is to compel you to ask yourself: "What does he take me for?" Precisely this question is provoked by the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin. I wrote not long ago that it was not right to condescend to her just because of her provincial roots or her piety, let alone her slight flirtatiousness, but really her conduct since then has been a national disgrace. It turns out that none of her early claims to political courage was founded in fact, and it further turns out that some of the untested rumors about her—her vindictiveness in local quarrels, her bizarre religious and political affiliations—were very well-founded, indeed. Moreover, given the nasty and lowly task of stirring up the whack-job fringe of the party's right wing and of recycling patent falsehoods about Obama's position on Afghanistan, she has drawn upon the only talent that she apparently possesses.

It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.

That's some grade-A Hitchens snark - the kind his rightwing fellow travellers have delighted in seeing him dispense on leftwing victims over the past few years. Any time now, you'll be reading them and their protestations that they never really liked the "drink-soaked former-Trotskyite popinjay"  after all, that he was always to leftie other than his support for the Iraq war.

They'll be denying the ever watched Easy Rider too. Denis Hopper just left the collapsing Republican big tent too.

And the meltdown continues. Who'll be next? I wouldn't bet against it being John McCain unless I was offered very good odds...

Update: They're falling out over at NRO's Corner too. Matt Y has the details. This really does feel to me like the beginnings of the schism between wingnuts and "wing-sanes", a messy and protracted divorce that will end up with one side getting custody of "the base" (be it ever so base) and the other, maybe, getting to keep the name.

Comments

[Xanthippas]

Ugh. I guess people feel the need to write about this bozo, but why is it that all he needs to do is turn his rhetorical weaponry on McCain and liberal bloggers (who he considers members of the "surrender faction") are suddenly linking and applauding?

[beingajoe]

Good for him. Glad he saw the light. I hope more of this happens.

By the way, here is a website that shares all the Sarah Palin dirt to support Barack Obama!