WAD CITY

A pretty good brief overview of conservatives jumping ship, and why it isn’t just because McCain represents a losing brand.

I knew I wouldn’t be the only one. James Fallows:

Let’s review what we have seen from Barack Obama through the two years of his campaign:

• Skills in formal oratory that, in my view, you’d have to go back to John F. Kennedy to match. […]
• Skills in telling stories (and evoking emotions) through pictures that we associate mainly with Reagan and no one since. […]
• And skill in personal presentation, which means that the candidate is never seen as being testy, rarely seems rattled, seems to know where he wants to go and makes some progress every day — the only candidate this really resembles is Ronald Reagan.

So this is rather insane.

Marc Ambinder noted that Francis Fukuyama, a key figure in the neoconservative movement who has moved away from it over the last few years, endorsed Obama in this issue of The American Conservative. I decided to see what others at TAC thought. TAC describes itself as “in considerable part Buchananite,” so I was not surprised to find a diversity of opinion. What I was surprised to find were more endorsements for Barack Obama than John McCain.

I’m not that familiar with TAC, but I’ve read pieces in it from time to time. Rightly or wrongly, I see TAC as espousing a sort of roguish conservativism compared to the hegemonistic voice-of-the-GOP perspective of today’s National Review or The Weekly Standard.

Out of 18 pieces by “conservative, libertarian, and independent thinkers,” there are 5 who will vote for Obama and 3 for McCain. All of McCain’s endorsements are reluctant, while 2 of Obama’s are strong and positive. In fact, more contributors said they were going to abstain from voting than were going to vote McCain. Four are abstaining, with the remaining 6 voting for third-party or write-in candidates such as Bob Barr (Libertarian), Chuck Baldwin (Constitution), or Ron Paul.

Some excerpts:

Peter Brimelow

Oh, and Obama and Whatshisname? I’m indifferent.

Reid Buckley

Barack Obama, on the other hand, for all his muddy shifting with the political winds, has made his vision clear, and it is doctrinaire Democratic left-wing socialism and therefore too depressing for words. I hew to the belief that he is also a decent man and probably politically more savvy than John McCain. He may learn. He may be knocked off his horse on the way to Damascus. But I can’t vote for the prospect of Obama’s education. So I vote McCain.

John Patrick Diggins

Republicans have no trouble losing a war and calling it a victory, and some of them are voting for McCain for that reason. Obama, in contrast, is stuck with a war he opposed, and politics may force him to stay the course. Still, I prefer the professor to the warrior. McCain claims he is thinking only about the good of the country, then chooses as his running mate a gun-happy huntress who supported the Alaskan independence movement, which advocates secession from the United States. No wonder she is idolized by those who disdain the very federal government that built the Alaskan Highway. As Orwell observed, those receiving benefits always hate the benefactor.

Rod Dreher

This will be the first year since I was old enough to vote that I will not cast a ballot in a presidential election. I quote a character from Richard Linklater’s “Slacker” in my defense: “Withdrawing in disgust is not the same thing as apathy.”

Francis Fukuyama

I’m voting for Barack Obama this November for a very simple reason. It is hard to imagine a more disastrous presidency than that of George W. Bush. It was bad enough that he launched an unnecessary war and undermined the standing of the United States throughout the world in his first term. But in the waning days of his administration, he is presiding over a collapse of the American financial system and broader economy that will have consequences for years to come. As a general rule, democracies don’t work well if voters do not hold political parties accountable for failure. While John McCain is trying desperately to pretend that he never had anything to do with the Republican Party, I think it would a travesty to reward the Republicans for failure on such a grand scale.

Kara Hopkins

When John McCain appears on screen, all vacant grin and Eeyore cadence, I reach for the mute button. I hate his wars. I don’t trust his maverick pose. When he says “my friends,” he doesn’t mean me. But I am voting for him.

Call it damage control. Come January, the Senate will be firmly in Democratic hands, perhaps with a filibuster-proof majority.

Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn

Without doubt, my decision to vote for Barack Obama for president began when I watched his televised speech to the Democratic Convention in 2004. Today on the cold page of the computer printout, it loses something. Outside of the electrifying moment of his delivery, the speech contains less than I remembered. But what is there explains the reverberations in so many parts of my inherited mental and moral universe.

Leonard Liggio

I plan to vote for Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party presidential candidate.

Daniel McCarthy

Given the choice between John McCain and Barack Obama, the Democrat clearly represents the lesser evil, if not by much.

…

With that in mind, I’m writing in Ron Paul for president and Barry Goldwater Jr. for vice president. Why agonize over whether Barr or Baldwin is the better constitutionalist, when you can cast your ballot for the very best? A vote for Paul is an endorsement of all he has accomplished (and might yet achieve) and a rejection of the often honorable but never effective course of the third parties.

Scott McConnell

For these reasons, I’m voting for Obama. While he doesn’t inspire me, he does impress. His two-year campaign has been disciplined and intelligent. He has surrounded himself with the mainstream liberal types who staffed the Clinton administration. Like countless social democratic leaders before him, he probably was more left-wing when he was younger. Circumstance and ambition have pushed him to the center. If elected, he will inherit an office burdened with massive financial and foreign-policy problems. Unlike John McCain, he won’t try to bomb his way out of the mess.

Declan McCullagh

I am not voting for president in 2008.

This was not an easy decision, but all the candidates are flawed, at least if you believe in limited government, civil liberties, free markets, and a foreign policy far less bellicose than what we have today.

Robert A. Pape

I strongly support Barack Obama for president. In the past, I have supported both Republicans and Democrats, choosing the candidate with the leadership qualities and foreign-policy principles most likely to advance the national security of the United States. Of course, we have no crystal balls, but leaders with sound judgment on core policies and courage to look beyond political winds of the moment greatly improve the odds of long-term success. Obama scores uncommonly high on the “judgment-courage” index, qualities that will be needed as our next president seeks to repair the damage from the triple train wreck of our overstretched military, underperforming economy, and floundering international reputation that is now undermining our national security.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

Nonparticipation sends a message that we no longer believe in the racket they have cooked up for us, and we want no part of it.

You might say that this is ineffective. But what effect does voting have? It gives them what they need most: a mandate. Nonparticipation helps deny that to them. It makes them, just on the margin, a bit more fearful that they are ruling us without our consent. This is all to the good. The government should fear the people. Not voting is a good beginning toward instilling that fear.

Gerald J. Russello

I will not be voting for any federal candidate and will probably be writing in third parties for local elections, if I even step into the voting booth.

…

In this election, we face choosing between a “maverick” with a penchant for militarism who has been part of the Washington power structure for over two decades, and an inexperienced figure who wants to save us from ourselves, or, as my friend Gene Healy puts it, “the Messiah vs. the prophet of doom.”

Steve Sailer

Obama is probably somewhat better than McCain on imperialism. It would be hard to be worse. They’re comparably terrible on immigration. And Obama is likely worse on insolvency.

…

Thus, I intend to do in 2008 what I did during the Bush-Kerry whoop-tee-doo: write in the name of a public figure who is actually trying to solve a major, long-term problem, my friend Ward Connerly.

John Schwenkler

But such rhetoric is sorely needed, and so even if a vote for Barr is ultimately a vote for the sort of cross-partisan coalition he could have helped to build, it’s a vote worth casting. Next time, perhaps, the candidate who stands for liberty will do better than 1 percent.

Joseph Sobran

I’ve been reading Chuck Baldwin’s essays for several years. My first reaction to them was to wish we had rulers who could read him, grasp what he was saying, and take it to heart. I never dreamed I would have the chance to vote for him myself.

Peter Wood

I’m a reluctant McCain supporter. He might do considerable damage to our nation, not least because of his view on immigration, but the damage of a McCain administration is nothing compared to the vast institutionalization of the radical Left that Obama would usher in. McCain’s attractions for me lie almost entirely in his being the only viable alternative to Obama. I do like Palin, and that makes it a little easier to support McCain. She connects the Republican ticket to something deep and genuine in the American experience.

Charles Franklin:

So what can we conclude? There is no evidence of a hidden support for McCain among undecided voters. They split more evenly than does the “decided” pool of respondents, who split 54-46 in this sample (Oct 3-11) but that’s well within normal expectations and is a modest difference in any case.

Second, the role of racial attitude is important at the individual level, but the aggregate consequence is extremely modest. Some are moved away from Obama yet others are moved towards him. And among the undecided, the distribution of opinion on this measure of racial attitude is virtually identical to that in the population.

In a year of endless discussion about racial effects there has been far more speculation and far less data analysis than is good for us. Let’s put our data on the table before continuing to opine about this subject.

Nick Panagakis:

Over seven weeks, chance of mind-changing drops from 20% to 9%. Moreover, good chance of doing so drops even faster, from 8% to only 3% overall (2%-3% of Obama voters, 3%-4% of McCain voters, last three reports.). In 2004, ABC polls showed the same “good chance” trend up to a few weeks before the election.