(My letter to the National Review Online after Chris Buckley's resignation...)
I've been a voting Republican since July 1, 1971. I voted for George Bush in 2000. This time last year, I was a supporter of John McCain, and admiring him for his comeback from his first campaign disaster. He lost me for good when he voted against Jim Webb's New GI Bill, because it brought the funding for the education benefit up to date with the contemporary cost of going to college. He said that might harm the "retention rates" for non-commissioned members in our 'volunteer' army. (Perhaps he and Lindsay Graham consider the volunteer enlistment agreement an indenture as well.) I always admired William F. Buckley too, but never quite so much as when I heard his son had opted out of the dysfunctional campaign to elect a man who exhibits not only the early stages of mental deterioration quite common for people in their 70's, but many of the self-destructive tendencies that brought down the Nixon administration. When I see him speaking these days, I'm reminded of the movie "The Caine Mutiny", and Humphrey Bogart's marvelous portrayal of an aging Naval commander and war hero, complete with the nervous facial ticks masquerading as smiles, desperately trying to hang on to past glories, and all the while descending slowly into madness. It's plain to see for any who aspire to intellectual honesty, as WFB Jr. always did, but not to the die-hards and hate-mongers who control our party today. For them it's insufficient to agree to disagree, it's a scorched earth issue, worthy of a vendetta. As for Mr. Rove's questioning Senator Obama's qualifications for the Presidency, all of that was heard 148 years ago as well, when the Republican party nominated Abraham Lincoln. I've been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's book about Lincoln, and the similarities between the two men from Illinois are striking (albeit Lincoln had no formal education). If you laid out their resumes' side-by-side, it would be hard to tell them apart, but for that one detail. The party establishment didn't think very highly of Lincoln at first, either. They even ridiculed his name, calling him 'Abram'. Nonetheless, in spite of his inadequate preparation for the job, it seems he did alright in the eyes of history. I did a little survey of polls on-line, and Lincoln beat out Washington and FDR as the consensus choice: our greatest President. But perhaps Mr. Rove is a better judge of character. I'm sure he would say: "Obama is no Abraham Lincoln..." (and I would agree, just not by such a wide margin). I suspect that today, the Conservatives in our party would brand Lincoln the worst (and best) example of a 'liberal fascist', in fact I'm sure of it. In kind, I wonder what Lincoln might have to say about his Republican party, circa 2008? Whatever he said, I'm sure it would be gracious. But perhaps our party is no longer the party of Lincoln, having become it seems, more the party of Booth.
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