A few decades late, Andrew Sullivan discovers the conservative movement's flaws

[NNN0LHI]

http://mediamatters.org/blog/200912040010

December 04, 2009 9:58 am ET by Jamison Foser

Under the header "Leaving the Right," Andrew Sullivan explains his departure from the conservative movement:

... I've always been fickle in partisan terms. To have supported Reagan and Bush and Clinton and Dole and Bush and Kerry and Obama suggests I never had a party to quit.

...

For these reasons, I found it intolerable after 2003 to support the movement that goes by the name "conservative" in America.

...

I cannot support a movement that exploded spending and borrowing and blames its successor for the debt.

And yet he supported Reagan, and Bush after Reagan -- presidents who exploded spending and borrowing. He supported Clinton, who dramatically reduced the deficit in his first term, and then abandoned him for Dole. Then, after Clinton balanced the budget in his second term, Sullivan supported Bush the Second. Huh?

[HereSince1628]

1. Don't expect rationality in something that is decided intuitively

or that is decided emotionally. The conundrums will just give you a migraine.

[closeupready]

2. He's an attention-whore, IMO.

He just does stuff like this to seem edgy and different. And he's lost relevance, so that probably hurts his pocketbook.

[QC]

4. Bingo! Sully doesn't like being on the losing team, so he made the switch,

and, being Sully, one of the world's great solipsists, must make a public navel-gazing exhibition of it all.

What a horrible person, and what a shame he is now the darling of DU, this same person who accused liberals of treason in the aftermath of 9/11, used his position as editor of The New Republic to promote The Bell Curve, and spent years condemning "gay hedonism" while cruising for bareback sex, and so much more.

[closeupready]

5. Oh, yeah - also, helped popularized "the 'Blame America First' crowd" -

How many DU members were stung by that accusation during the GWB years? Well, you can thank Sully for that, among others.

[QC]

6. But he and the likes of Joe Klein are now The Oracles of Truth on DU,

while people like Howard Zinn and Dennis Kucinich and now Garry Wills are Enemies of the People.

Who ever would have imagined such things?

[BeFree]

10. Who?

What did you say his name is? Oh, wait seems I heard it a time or two.
What's he do that makes people talk about him? Must be important.

[BeFree]

11. Who?

What did you say his name is? Oh, wait seems I heard it a time or two.
What's he do that makes people talk about him? Must be important.

[Romulox]

3. Quick--hang a 'D' after this guy's name and get him into Congress!

I could give a fuck about the latest "repentant republican". :hi:

[joeybee12]

7. I wish I could find a link to the garbage this POS wrote when he stopped being for the Iraq War

but managed to slam those who were against it from the start because his decision was based on clear and apparently LONG thought, while being against Iraq and seeing what it was all about from the start was simply ignorant.

[QC]

8. Do you remember his "fifth column" quote?

His fan club here seems to have forgotten that one:

The middle part of the country—the great red zone that voted for Bush—is clearly ready for war. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead—and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.

Come to think of it, though, his DU fan club probably doesn't find that quote objectionable, considering how they seem to spend about 90% of their time here red-baiting.

[joeybee12]

9. That was a gem....

...not only managing to be for the illegal invasion, but to tar those who are against it as some sort of sub-species.

[QC]

14. Opposing the invasion became the correct position at the very moment

when Captain Bareback adopted it, and not a moment before.

Due to Sully's extreme narcissism, he always interprets whatever he is thinking at a particular moment as a new trend or universal principle. Back when he still had his GAP model figure, bears were disgusting, but then when Sully got fat he announced that bears were the ultimate in HOTT. And so on. Just like everything on The Brady Bunch was about Marsha, it's always Sully Sully Sully.

[closeupready]

15. Oh, yeah - wow, I do remember that.

Disgusting excuse for a human being, now that I think about all that shit he spewed. Roy Cohn was reincarnated - who knew.

[charlie]

12. It was gay issues

He won't admit it, but was his own "special interest"* issue that flipped him. He was always catty, ebullient, neener-neener LOL-liberals, and then the Repubs would pull some boneheaded move against gays and it'd throw him into a funk for a week. He'd regroup, they'd do it again, he'd sulk. Even after the Edwards/Cheney debate, he said Cheney made him want to roll over and hope for a belly rub. But then in 2004 the GOP made stomping gays a prime issue in state iniatives all over the country and it stripped his gears.

The rest is justfication for what really ate him up.

* as good Republicans, including himself, would call it

[jesus_of_suburbia]

16. Yep.

[QC]

18. Precisely--because for Sully, everything really is about Sully. n/t

[Faryn Balyncd]

13. Ironic that this is published (though not written by) on ex-conservative David Brock's Media Matters

Some of the most articulate critics of a dgenerate movement come from those who eventually see the light.


(thinking of David Brock, Andrew Sullivan, Frank Schaeffer, among others).






Yet it seems almost humorous that the author of this article, Jamison Foser ("....Well, duh. Some of us have known that for quite some time. If Sullivan wants to contribute something interesting, he can tell us what took him so long.....") seems oblivious to the fact that the site on which he is published, Media Matters, one of the most effective reality-based voices, was founded by an ex-conservative who once helped orchestrate right wing propaganda.

[spanone]

17. he's been rowing in this direction for sometime now....welcome to the fold, andrew