“There is an alignment of elites taking place…”

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by David Safier

Christopher Buckley, conservative, novelist, essayist and son of William F., recently said he's voting for Obama. The right is piling on, so he's fighting back. In an essay on The Daily Beast, he goes after Rush Limbaugh.

Buckley actually likes Limbaugh. Go figure. But now that Buckley is the object of the Rush-man's scorn, he's simultaneously perturbed and amused. The column has a clip from one of Rush's shows where he says,

Folks, there is an alignment of elites taking place, pseudo-intellectuals who don't want . . . they think of Obama as one of them . . . he's smart, he's cool, he's eloquent . . .

This is what's happening. The right wing intelligentsia is criticizing the Republican Party, and the stalwart are showing they hate thinking people without regard to party affiliations– if they express divergent opinions, that is. If the writers toe the party line, they're great, brilliant, the finest the pundit class has to offer. But when they utter a discouraging word, watch out! McCain referred to these renegade conservatives as "Georgetown Cocktail Party Conservatives."

It looks like the GOP big tent has shrunk to the size of a Boy Scout pup tent.

There's no one more elite than the toney-private-school-educated Chris Buckley, so he clearly takes all these insults hurled at him as compliments. At the end of his column, he quotes E.J. Dionne, a liberal columnist who happened to attend the same toney private school.Dionne makes as elite a pronouncement on the state of the conservative movement as you'll find anywhere. And it's right on the money.

The cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity—and Sarah Palin. Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans, learned manifestoes by direct-mail hit pieces.

It's going to be interesting watching the Republican Humpty Dumpty try to put itself together again over the next few years.

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