Leave It To Sullivan…

…to be so insanely wrong in his characterisations of other conservatives that he makes me look like an ecumenical bridge-builder who looks for the best in everyone’s ideas.  I think there is a pretty big difference between objecting strongly to the betratyal of conservatism based on accurate assessments of what other people are proposing and the wild, scattershot style of condemnation that Sullivan likes to use. 

So, when will Ross apologise for his support for torture?  Oh, wait, that’s right–Ross doesn’t support the use of torture.  Neither does he obviously or necessarily favour “massive domestic spending and borrowing, aggressively religious social policy, utopian foreign policy, and evisceration of civil liberties.”  All of these things, except for the non-existent “aggressively religious social policy,” can be laid at the door of the administration and its reflexive supporters, but to imply that everyone who proposes less rigid or doctrinaire approaches to policy thinking (no matter what they are) must be headed down the same dark path is more than a little ridiculous.  Ross’ Sam’s Club Pawlentyism is the sort of politics that, in its concrete form, isn’t noticeably different from Sullivan’s agenda.  In certain areas (social policy, particularly Ross’ interest in natalism, immediately leaps to mind), it is probably much less leftist. 

Of course, to Sullivan “aggressively religious social policy” means a politician mildly suggesting in a stump speech that homosexuality may not be exactly what God intended.  As we all know from Sullivan’s dreadful book, this is not conservatism, but “fundamentalism,” which is an amazing social movement that happens to include everyone except for Andrew Sullivan and perhaps his two dogs (and we’re not so sure that the dogs aren’t just theocon agents in disguise). 

I’m a pretty relentless purist by the standards of most folks today, so I don’t object to these sorts of critiques as such, but there’s something more than a little comic about the man who wants a carbon tax and universal health care lecturing anyone about deviations from the conservative norm, much less accusing them of abandoning conservatism for holding positions not much more to the left than his own.  How exactly did a socially liberal Rockefeller Republican of Sullivan’s sort persuade himself that he is actually the last of the true Goldwaterites?