Sometimes, my "objectively" (as Marx would put it) leftward-leaning associates defend their stance like this: "Really, I agree with you guys on the right about fiscal conservativism/government policy/abortion/whatever, but you have to admit that the Republicans haven't done nearly as much as they could there. Therefore, I'm supporting Clinton/Gore/Kerry/Obama/etc."

This is the oddest sort of argument, but I hear it all the time concerning candidates from "the right." If someone on the right doesn't completely, 100% live up to some ideal we say we support, we'll turn around and support someone who has consistently opposed that allegedly-important ideal. (Meanwhile, utter hypocrisy from the other side apparently arouses no similar ire.)

For example, a friend of mine was incensed that the Gingrich and the Republican Congress of the 1990s didn't completely fulfill their entire "Contract with America" -- so he then supported Democrats, who opposed nearly every single tenet. (Imagine how absurd it would sound for an ardent socialist to complain that Clinton hadn't been far enough to the left ("He supported NAFTA!") so, from now on, he would be supporting only pro-capitalist candidates. I'd be grateful for his vote, but would also seriously wonder about his reasoning skills.)

Whatever damage he may or may not ultimately inflict on the nation, Obama has been useful in this regard: As with Bush before him, he exposes things for what they are. Just as the Iraq war and other Bush policies revealed the apparent insincerity of many Democratic positions of the 1990s (Social Security was suddenly not a crisis, even though Al Gore's 2000 election campaign was mostly based on exactly that claim?), so also Obama's campaign provides yet another opportunity for people to reveal their true moral compass.

Earlier, we'd heard about the apparent defections of J.C. Watts and Armstrong Williams. And Catholic Douglas Kmiec. (The essence of conservativism is apparently oratory skill, no matter what is being said.) And recently Colin Powell. (No shock, though: what did we expect from the man who knew full well it was his own department that had first outed Plame, and yet stood silently by while another was falsely accused?) And now apparently William Buckley's son Christopher.

By mentioning these "defections" I DO NOT at all mean to imply that it is immoral to be anything but a conservative. Had these individuals said: "I now realize that conservative principles don't work, and have decided leftism does" then there would be, it seems to me, no cause for such aspersions. But what we're seeing here is not a principled change in opinion, but more the line of reasoning outlined above.

For example, regarding Christopher Buckley's newfound support for Obama, we find conservative pundit Kathleen Parker cheering him on:

The truth few wish to utter is that the GOP has abandoned many conservatives, who mostly nurse their angst in private. Those chickens we keep hearing about have indeed come home to roost. Years of pandering to the extreme wing — the “kooks” the senior Buckley tried to separate from the right — have created a party no longer attentive to its principles.

Instead, as Christopher Buckley pointed out in a blog post on thedailybeast.com explaining his departure from National Review, eight years of “conservatism” have 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.”

Republicans are not short on brainpower — or pride — but they have strayed off course. They do not, in fact, deserve to win this time, and someone had to remind them why.

Christopher Buckley, ever the swashbuckling heir to his father’s defiant spirit, walked the plank so that the sinking mother ship might right itself.

No doubt his seafaring father is cheering from heaven: “Ahoy there, Christo! Well done, my son.”

Really? Unlike Kathleen Parker, I don't claim to be channeling Bill Buckley, but I doubt he'd be thrilled to hear that his son believes the answer to today's Republican Party woes is the most socialist member of the US Senate.

(And who are the "kooks"? Apparently, they include those who support (shudder) Sarah Palin. Parker also wasn't too happy about the Saddleback debate -- apparently discussing the intersection of faith and public policy is "un-American." And if too many "kooks" are the central problem of conservativism, how can aligning with DailyKos and Code Pink possibly be the answer?)

After discounting out the usual contradictions in Buckley's explanation (Republicans haven't cut the budget -- yet McCain has a better track record than Obama; McCain has changed some of his positions -- yet Buckley supported Bob Dole, who was a far greater flip-flopper (and let's not mention Obama's many 180-degree turns); Buckley disparages Palin as inexperienced and insubstantial, yet supported Dan Quayle), Ed Feser wonders aloud what's really bugging Buckley:

Buckley’s true motives, I would guess, are hinted at by his recourse to the standard leftist smears against religious conservatives, referring as he does to the “fatwas” directed against him and to the “Right Wing Sanhedrin.” It is even more evident in his passing acknowledgment (in his first piece) that “on abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian” and his evident disgust (as expressed in his second piece) with the efforts made by some Republican politicians to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case (that is, to keep her from being starved to death by her husband – a little detail Buckley leaves out, swallowing the camel of cold-blooded murder that he might strain out any gnat that might taint his doctrinaire “federalism”). All of this coming from a man who claims that it is the Republicans who have abandoned true conservatism, and whose father – a devout Catholic and the man who more or less defined modern American conservatism – emphasized, from God and Man at Yale onward, that the defense of the moral and religious heritage of Western civilization must always be a central part of the conservative project. Without that (I would add) contemporary “conservatism” is really just libertarianism, which is itself just a riff on liberalism and not conservative at all.

I don't know the first thing about "Christo" Buckley, but if Feser's thesis is right, it would hardly be unusual. Friends often tell me that they're willing to support the left in policy after policy where they disagree because they're far more afraid of "the religious right" -- to which they attribute all sorts of bogeyman-like powers and motives. Of course, when I press them for specific examples, the only thing I hear back is that the "religious right" opposes gay marriage -- by which token, we must surely have been living in a fascist theocracy for these past two centuries.

All the more reason to support actual authoritarianism, I suppose.