"Just When You Think Sullivan Can’t Go Any Lower"

Back in 2007, Andrew Sullivan declared President Bush “the Weimar President.” As I wrote back then:

I can only guess that Andrew believes that President Bush is an elderly figurehead leading a weakened but relatively benign quasi-socialist administration suffering the ravages of hyper-inflation and that Hillary, Obama or whoever his successor is, is the next Hitler, about to install a terribly malevolent war machine and concurrent massive welfare state?

No of course not — Andrew saves that epithet that for Bush’s successor atop the GOP at least for the moment, as Pejman Yousefzadeh writes:

Readers of this blog will know that I am no fan of Sarah Palin’s. I don’t think that she is a bad person, and I am sure that if I met her, I would find her charming; her emotional intelligence and her ability to win over observers is quite impressive. At the end of the day, I don’t think she has what it takes to be a spokesperson for the center-right, or the GOP, and I certainly don’t think she has what it takes to be President of the United States.

Of course, this viewpoint does not go far enough for Andrew Sullivan, who titles a blog post about Palin “Tomorrow Belongs To Her, Ctd.”

Who actually believes that the choice of words in that title was an accident?

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But then, as Dan Riehl noted yesterday, responding to Leon Wieseltier’s rebuke of Sullivan from within Sully’s former stomping grounds, the New Republic:

He’s capable of hating almost anything, or anyone. Right now, Sullivan hates everything from a single uterus, to the Christian faith and Zionism, among other things. Two years from now, he may be hating something else because, to know what Sullivan hates at any particular time, is only to know that which he opposes, not which he truly loathes.

Way back in 2002, Sullivan wrote a cogent, well-written, well-reasoned defense of Condi Rice against a barrage of spittle-flecked leftwing bigotry for Salon. No doubt naively, I still sometimes have a hard time equating the Sullivan of 9/11 to late 2003 with today’s model. The name’s the same, but not much else appears to be similar.

On the other hand, the same thing could be said, though not to the same degree, about his current publisher, as well.

Update: Related thoughts from Maggie’s Farm.