Video of Laura Ingraham interrogating Christopher Hitchens over his rather weakly supported endorsement of Barack Obama for president.
Hitch’s primary position in this chat is that Obama should be supported because he is “evolving” toward support of a more aggressive policy against international terrorism. Hardly the most persuasive pitch to say the least. Perhaps all those years of arguing for evolution through natural selection may have given him too much of a preference for the word itself.
His auxillery case is that McCain has become senile and temperamentally unfit for leadership. That’s something which is supposedly entirely and exclusively demonstrated by his “irresponsible” selection of Sarah Palin for vice president. Hardly more persuasive.
But in reading Hitchens’ recent writing on this matter, one tends to think that last point is what is actually driving the others (something Laura instantly zeroes in on). There is a certain reflexive personal hostility to Mrs. Palin in Hitchens’ writing, which is far closer to a definition of political irresponsiblity than McCain’s selection of her allegedly is.
Leftiest, even the decent left hates it when proles gain power. They are the upperclass that helps the proles and it kills their role when a prole like Palin gains power.
Usually opinions like the one Grim just expressed set off my hyperbole meter. But frankly, I can’t think of a better explanation.
It is an objective fact that Obama has less political experience in terms of time and executive experience than Barack Obama. Sarah Palin has actual accomplishments in government, whereas Obama’s accomplishments are so trivial that even his supporters either don’t know what they are or are embarrassed to point them out. To choose to not support McCain because Palin will be “a heartbeat away” from the presidency while blithely supporting Obama to be sworn into the presidency on January 20th is a gaping whopper of a contradiction that should produce a crippling cognitive dissonance in a normal mind.
One would sort of expect such a disdain for Palin from reactionary paleo-conservatives like Victor Davis Hanson, George Will, Charles Krauthammer and (surprisingly, but so be it) Kathleen Parker. For this crew, the VP pick couldn’t have gone to someone old enough or white enough or male enough to keep them from wincing while pulling the lever for a moderate Republican like McCain. But Hitchins? WTF?
Of course I meant to say above that Obama has less experience than Palin, not that Obama has less experience than himself.
>>>”One would sort of expect such a disdain for Palin from reactionary paleo-conservatives”
Very astute and true.
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“…from reactionary paleo-conservatives like Victor Davis Hanson…”
Perhaps you can explain this to me: I have seen Hanson to be a neo-conservative completely through. At what point did he become a paleo?