Safest Bet Ever
After calling John Kerry “the right man – and the conservative choice – for a difficult and perilous time” in a 2004 edition of the London Sunday Times, and describing a speech by Obama in May of 2009 as “a conservative one by a conservative president,” Andrew Sullivan temporarily came to his senses and had a reverse Pauline Kael moment. In March of 2011, he told Chris Matthews, “I don’t know why anybody voted for Obama in the primaries,” and around the same time, titled a piece, “Obama To The Next Generation: Screw You, Suckers:”
To all those under 30 who worked so hard to get this man elected, know this: he just screwed you over. He thinks you’re fools. Either the US will go into default because of Obama’s cowardice, or you will be paying far far more for far far less because this president has no courage when it counts. He let you down. On the critical issue of America’s fiscal crisis, he represents no hope and no change. Just the same old Washington politics he once promised to end.
As I wrote at the time, “Funny though, I think Andrew will find Barack Obama once again conservative — or in Sullivan’s case, reactionary enough — to meet the definition of the word as only Andrew Sullivan can define it.”
Flash-forward to today’s edition of the Daily Caller. In a piece titled, “Four years later, some ‘Obamacons’ disenchanted with Obama,” the DC manages to find one self-styled “conservative,” who’s ready and eager to vote for The One in November:
Andrew Sullivan, a blogger for The Daily Beast, still considers himself a conservative, but supports Obama in 2012 as he did in 2008. In a post on Monday, Sullivan once again made ““The Conservative Case for Obama,” in which he argues that Obama is actually the more conservative candidate.
“My post yesterday says it all,” he emailed TheDC. “The only nonpartisan non fanatical conservatives I know of are for Obama. No other option makes sense to me.”
Well, the left has been warning conservatives of the danger of epistemic closure for quite some time.
…says the man whose interest in Sarah Palin’s ladyparts bordered upon the Lovecraftian.
Just as George W. Bush’s support of the Defense of Marriage Act in 2004 drove Andrew into the French-looking arms of John Kerry, so did Obama’s Biden-forced change of heart this year on gay marriage assure him that Sullivan would be in his corner all the way through to November.
The annoying thing about Andrew, and some of the others quoted in the DC article, is Sullivan refuses to admit he’s changed his positions because, in the end, he’s a single issue voter. Instead, he goes through pretzel logic to redefine conservatism so it meshes with the views of one Andrew Sullivan (which in a way is economically smart for him — an Andrew Sullivan who admits he’s siding with the left on 80-90 percent of the key issues nowadays is far less useful/employable for others in the media than a ‘conservative’ who’ll attack his own side and support Obama).
“The only nonpartisan non fanatical conservatives I know of are for Obama… ”
A small club, to be sure, which includes David Brooks and Conor Friedersdorf. I don’t think Peggy Noonan renewed her membership.