Andrew Sullivan - Leaving the Right

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/4/09 at 9:55am

I cannot support a movement that claims to believe in limited government but backed an unlimited domestic and foreign policy presidency that assumed illegal, extra-constitutional dictatorial powers until forced by the system to return to the rule of law.

I cannot support a movement that exploded spending and borrowing and blames its successor for the debt.

I cannot support a movement that so abandoned government's minimal and vital role to police markets and address natural disasters that it gave us Katrina and the financial meltdown of 2008.

I cannot support a movement that holds torture as a core value.

I cannot support a movement that holds that purely religious doctrine should govern civil political decisions and that uses the sacredness of religious faith for the pursuit of worldly power.

I cannot support a movement that is deeply homophobic, cynically deploys fear of homosexuals to win votes, and gives off such a racist vibe that its share of the minority vote remains pitiful.

I cannot support a movement which has no real respect for the institutions of government and is prepared to use any tactic and any means to fight political warfare rather than conduct a political conversation.

I cannot support a movement that sees permanent war as compatible with liberal democratic norms and limited government.

I cannot support a movement that criminalizes private behavior in the war on drugs.

I cannot support a movement that would back a vice-presidential candidate manifestly unqualified and duplicitous because of identity politics and electoral cynicism.

I cannot support a movement that regards gay people as threats to their own families.

I cannot support a movement that does not accept evolution as a fact.

I cannot support a movement that sees climate change as a hoax and offers domestic oil exploration as the core plank of an energy policy.

I cannot support a movement that refuses ever to raise taxes, while proposing no meaningful reductions in government spending.

I cannot support a movement that refuses to distance itself from a demagogue like Rush Limbaugh or a nutjob like Glenn Beck.

I cannot support a movement that believes that the United States should be the sole global power, should sustain a permanent war machine to police the entire planet, and sees violence as the core tool for international relations.

Does this make me a "radical leftist" as Michelle Malkin would say? Emphatically not. But it sure disqualifies me from the current American right.

To paraphrase Reagan, I didn't leave the conservative movement. It left me.

And increasingly, I'm not alone.
The Daily Dish

[Q]

Posted: 12/4/09 at 9:58am

". . . from the current American right."

Current?!? Where the hell has he been?

[romantico]

Posted: 12/4/09 at 11:51am

Good for him. Although I must ask. Did he think this all happened overnight? Where was he for the past 8 years?

[blueroses]

Posted: 12/4/09 at 12:11pm

Better late than never.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 12/4/09 at 1:54pm

I'm sure the Right will be terribly terribly sad to lose Andrew Sullivan. Terribly terribly sad. Tears will be flowing all through the RNC, no doubt. Glen Beck will rend his clothes in frustration, and Rush Limbaugh will go back on the pills.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/4/09 at 1:57pm

EL OH EL. You are so right, Roscoe.

This is a comment on Pam's House Blend -

Andrew Sullivan is the poster-child of the self-hating gay, log-cabin republican, war-promoting flip-flopper.

People that have an inner sense of what is right and wrong don't support someone like Bush then later, when he isn't popular, flip-flop. This isn't about right and wrong...expect that Sullivan found himself on the wrong side of public opinion and so changed sides.

[Calvin]

Posted: 12/4/09 at 3:01pm

To be fair to Sullivan, he later clarified that he wrote that in response to the little green footballs guy announcing that he was leaving the "movement" and didn't mean to imply that those were revelations he came to just this week.
Link

[Roscoe]

Posted: 12/4/09 at 3:12pm

Oh. So he's not leaving the right? Beck and Limbaugh can rest easy, secure in the knowledge that they've got at least one gay Catholic supporter?

[roquat]

Posted: 12/4/09 at 3:59pm

Although it did indeed take long enough, I'm glad Sullivan finally realized it is impossible to be a "gay conservative". I know more than a few people who consider themselves just that, people who wear themselves out justifying the antigay actions of the Republican politicians they support. What do they think they're accomplishing, other than revealing their own internalized homophobia?

[Scripps2]

Posted: 12/4/09 at 5:21pm

Why did the US ever take Andrew Sullivan seriously?

Come to think of it, why did the US ever take Tony Blair seriously?

Come to think of it, why did the British electorate ever take Tony Blair seriously?

Damn. I don't want to think anymore.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 12/5/09 at 1:47am

The US never took him seriously. The US MEDIA presented him again and again as their token gay and got a two-fer because he was hypercritical of the gay movement. He served them well.

I am proud to have spit gum at him in Provincetown.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/5/09 at 2:08am

I am proud of you, too!

[juan2]

Posted: 12/5/09 at 8:09am

Spit gum? Really? Did he spit back?