Hell hath no fury...

I mentioned just last week catching a National Review interview with Christopher Buckley in which the conservative author/satirist (if such a characterization is possible) did not quite rise to endorse Obama, but came mighty close.

Well, a few days later he done gone ahead and did just that, though not in the pages of NR, the publication his father founded and for which the son has been writing for several years.

The response from NR readers was swift and predictable, almost as swift as the acceptance of NR's editor to Buckley's offer to resign.

So, I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me. But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it’s a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me.

While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.

So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.

I'm not sure I'd buy into the Ronald's "real" credentials, though I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have flown back to DC from the Western WH to sign the Schiavo bill. That said, I'm sympathetic to the NR's readers. It's always distressing to see one of your leading lights join the other side. I've certainly thought plenty of bad thoughts about Christopher Hitchens and his ilk over the last several years.

But what I don't get is this. John McCain has been more or less despised by the leaders of the GOP for years. His campaign was on the rocks last year because GOP donors didn't care much for him. Huckabee was a far more popular figure for the social conservatives while Romney was the fave of the corporate interests. McCain basically stumbled into the nomination because those two groups split the ticket, as it were, and by the sheer incompetence of Romney and the lack of campaign infrastructure for Huckabee. Of Giuliani and Thompson, what can be said?

So this rage that is exploding cannot be about the candidate himself. Not even the Right's six week love affair with the adorable dominatrix that is his running mate quite explains it.

So is it just about the loss of power that inspires their hatred? Or is it something deeper -- that all of their ideas the propaganda they've been spewing for the past sixteen years is not only been wrong, but rejected by a large portion of the American public? And that's just the people who can write. These people? Well, I think I get that.

I'm genuinely interested, because as the guy with all the accents in his name likes to say, we do not mock them because we hate them (though we recognize that they sure hate us, you betcha), but rather feel a genuine concern for their state of mind. They're going to hurt themselves.

Or, maybe, they're acting out of fear we're taking names. The Thugocracy is nigh.

UPDATE: Wow.