In the New Republic, the economist Bruce Bartlett — who wrote a book condemning George Bush’s deviation from the path of true conservatism — describes the rise of the so-called “Obamacon,” a conservative who has either gone wild for Barack, so detests the current state of Bush Republicanism that he has decided to vote Democrat, or sees a “sliver of hope” in Obama.
In the former camp, he mentions Andrew Sullivan (who voted for John Kerry in 2004, which makes him an odd person to whom to affix the “con”), right-wing lawyer Doug Kmiec (a hard-line pro-lifer who somehow adduces on the basis of nothing that Obama is sympathetic to his cause), the son of Milton Friedman, and the wife of a Dallas magazine publisher who was once employed by National Review.
I think it’s fair to say this is not a particularly significant list, at least not compared to the rush to the Democratic exits in 1980 when Ronald Reagan ran against Jimmy Carter and dozens of intellectuals and activists — some of whom actually still proudly used the word “socialist” to describe themselves — essentially quit their party to join the opposing team.
The latter camp — the out-of-disgust camp — is more serious and more interesting. There is Francis Fukuyama, who has adduced from his growing disenchantment with the war in Iraq and the intellectuals who made a case for it an overweening arrogance that needs to be disciplined. Jeffrey Hart, the gentlemanly Dartmouth professor who was for decades a lonely conservative voice in academia, sees Bush as a betrayer of conservative principle.
The “sliver of hope” camp was given best voice by paleoconservative Andy Bacevich, whose isolationism has given him cause to see something analogous somewhere in Obama’s views.
I hate to tell Bruce Bartlett this, but every four years we hear all about conservatives who are so sick of their party that they intend to vote Democratic. The American Conservative, the Pat Buchanan magazine that published Bacevich’s “sliver of hope” piece, endorsed John Kerry. Republicans were said to be thrilled by the selection of Joe Lieberman as Gore’s running mate in 2000. And in 1992, a great deal was made of the decision of a few neoconservatives, notably COMMENTARY contributor Joshua Muravchik, to support Bill Clinton out of disgust with George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy.
The truth, however, is that, to judge by the discrepancy between the number of people who claim to be Democrats and the number of people who actually vote Republican, Republican presidential candidates have been drawing disproportionate numbers of votes from Democrats since 1968.
Obama’s going to have to do a lot better than gathering a few people on the Right who so detest Bush that they cannot see their way clear to voting for a Republican presidential candidate who himself once hated Bush with a passion greater than the passion even they can summon today.
