I was on Mark Levin’s radio show yesterday, and Mark made the fairly obvious point that it’s a bit much for him and me to be portrayed as hyper-partisan McCainiacs excoriating the apostates for not sticking with our guy at all costs. We’ve both been critical of McCain and neither of us wanted him as the nominee. In fact, it’s many of the recent ship-jumpers who helped inflict him on the party, telling us that Cap’n Maverick was the perfect chap to reach out to the soi-disant moderates, independents, centrists and whatnot.
Here, for example, is a lively column from The New York Times at the height of primary season telling us rightwing blowhards to suck it up and stand by McCain:
It may strike some conservatives today as odd, if not absurd, to see John McCain being subjected to an auto-da-fé conducted by such Torquemadas of the right as Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity. The other day, he even endured jeers at a conservative gathering in Washington, by otherwise well-behaved exemplars of conservatism…
In response, let me offer a thoughtful, considered, carefully worded comment: Would you all please just…shut…up? (I’d insert an intensifier, but this is a family newspaper.)
The author? One Christopher Buckley.
(PS As a break from all this internecine feuding, I’m heading down to Laconia, NH to see Sarah Palin.)