PrintMarch 2, 2009
Obama-endorsing Buckley having second thoughts?
On February 27, American Thinker, noted that conservative pundit Christopher Buckley (son of fabled conservative, and life-long practicing Catholic William F. Buckley) supported liberal, pro-abortion, pro-bigger, bigger, bigger big-government, presidential candidate Barack Obama. In an October 10, 2008 column, "Sorry Dad, I'm Voting for Obama", heard 'round the country. Mr. Buckley opined that Senator Obama has a:
first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren't going to get us out of this pit we've dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail....
He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.
In his column in today's The Daily Beast, Mr. Buckley, though far from admitting the absurdity of his earlier position, may be coming around:
President Barack Obama gave his first State of the Union speech.... The president presented a $3.6 trillion budget, and announced that we are getting out of Iraq but not really....Hold on-there's a typo in that paragraph. "$3.6 trillion budget" can't be right. The entire national debt is-what-about $11 trillion? He can't actually be proposing to spend nearly one-third of that in one year, surely. Let me check. Hmm. He did. The Wall Street Journal notes that federal outlays in fiscal 2009 will rise to almost 30 percent of the gross national product. In language that even an innumerate English major such as myself can understand: The US government is now spending annually about one-third of what the entire US economy produces.
