Well it looks like Christopher Hitchens, the Cromwell of our Age, is jumping on the Obama bandwagon. That’s not so surprising (esepcially after Obama’s groveling to AIPAC), it’s just a wonder what took him so long. Indeed, knowing Hitchens, it must have taken a lot of Brandy Alexanders to tolerate Sarah Palin. I guess he’s sobered up:

“Precisely this question is provoked by the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin. I wrote not long ago that it was not right to condescend to her just because of her provincial roots or her piety, let alone her slight flirtatiousness, but really her conduct since then has been a national disgrace. It turns out that none of her early claims to political courage was founded in fact, and it further turns out that some of the untested rumors about her—her vindictiveness in local quarrels, her bizarre religious and political affiliations—were very well-founded, indeed. Moreover, given the nasty and lowly task of stirring up the whack-job fringe of the party’s right wing and of recycling patent falsehoods about Obama’s position on Afghanistan, she has drawn upon the only talent that she apparently possesses.”

Harrumph! At least the old Christopher Hitchens would have attacked someone like Palin with savage fury almost immediately. The new Christopher Hitchens supposedly gives her the benefit of the doubt (unlike say, Mother Theresa) until not even a good stiff drink can wash her down anymore.

Who the hell does he think he’s kidding? He and other so-called nouveau conservatives like Dennis Miller or Jerry Zucker (perhaps on some level Bill Maher) align themselves with people they have absolute contempt for or (in Hitchen’s case) outright hatred towards in some sort of twisted alliance.  Why do they feel they can cynically hold on to the religious voters that hold the key to whatever power or policy they may hold dear while dismissing them as mad fanatics? Did you notice the same sort of turnabout take place in Bill Kristol when, after encouraging the McCain campaign to launch an all out attack on Obama suddenly turn 180 degrees on a dime and now say maybe that wasn’t such a good idea when the furies from “the base” were suddenly unleashed?

What they believe in won’t make so much as a dent against the Islam they say they fear because its damns the only faith that can stand up it and the people who believe it and then expects people to buy the notion that they’re secular nationalists when really their ideology subordinates U.S. interests on behalf of a foreign power.

Liberals may very well tolerate neocons because they view them as “accpetable” conservatives, but  also because they know something else about them: They are rank opportunists who view their own political survival paramount to anything else and they will do, say or believe anything to preserve themselves. A person who’s ideology is opportunism is not someone you have much to fear from.