From: 
Christopher Buckley, the author and son of the late conservative mainstay William F. Buckley, said in a telephone interview that he has resigned from the National Review, the political journal his father founded in 1955. Mr. Buckley said he had “been effectively fatwahed by the conservative movement” after endorsing Barack Obama in a blog posting on TheDailyBeast.com: [Sorry Dad, I’m voting for Obama]; since then, he said he has been blanketed with hate mail at the blog and at the National Review, where he has written a column.
As a result, he wrote to Richard Lowry, the editor of the National Review, and its publisher, Jack Fowler, offering to resign, and “this offer was rather briskly accepted,” Mr. Buckley said [
Sorry Dad, I was sacked]. 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.” Quoting Ronald Reagan, he added, “I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me”…
In the time it took me to write this post and format the article, the title went from Sorry Dad, I was Fired to Sorry Dad I was Sacked to Buckley Bows Out of National Review. I think his dad might have been proud. William F. Buckley was an ideological Conservative, not someone who borrowed the moniker to wrap around elitism, or racism, or xenophobia, or pugilism, or greed. In those days, we didn’t hate each other – we argued. I’ll have to admit that some of the things that have stuck with me over the years came from some of those arguments. Then it changed. I think it was in the Nixon era [but I can’t be sure because I trace almost everything that’s wrong to the Nixon era].
I recently heard myself saying, "Modern Republicans can’t win on their own since they represent the business elite, and there just aren’t enough of them [by definition]. They have to engage others who are on the right: the Religious Right, the Racist Right; the Hawks, the Xenophobic Right, etc." At the time I first said it, I wasn’t even aware I thought it. But, therein lies the strategy we call Rovian [though I don’t think he originated it]. And therein lies all the hate. It’s a required ingredient.
The question is does this represent all that "the Right" is? all that the Republicans are? or is it an aberration of the particular Republican Party we live with today? I don’t know the answer to that question. But I do know that I don’t hate Republicans, or Conservatives [even though the jury is still out on David Addington]. But, back to Buckley, he’s a chip off the old block and isn’t going to have any trouble finding work. Maybe there will be a new Magazine for those "other Conservatives"…
Update: The
retort from the
National Review…
[…] stood athwart history and yelled, Stop!"]. When Chris Buckley quit the National Review, I wrote: In the time it took me to write this post and format the article, the title went from Sorry Dad, […]