A Tory For Obama

Jeffrey Hart, the ur-conservative, endorses Barack Obama:

Jeffrey Hart sat at his kitchen table in slippers, reading Barack Obama’s words aloud. The retired Dartmouth professor, a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, wore on his shirt an artifact of the 1900 Republican presidential ticket — a McKinley-Roosevelt pin.

“I am not opposed to all wars,” Hart intoned, quoting a 2002 speech before the Illinois State Legislature in which Obama, then a state senator, had warned of the perils of invading Iraq. “I’m opposed to dumb wars.” Looking up from the page, Hart nodded his approval.

“Very Burkean,” he said, referring to the 18th century Irish political writer Edmund Burke, hailed by many as the founder of modern conservatism. “Prudential. A sense of history, and what we’re up against there.”

If You Lose Hewitt …

I guess she’ll always have Mickey. Coulter gets a talking to from Baghdad Hugh:

If Ann Coulter’s declares again that she’d campaign for Hillary at CPAC, she will be booed and rightly so.  Not only did her grandstanding on Hannity & Colmes divert attention from the real issue before conservatives — the need to abandon the idea of voting for Huckabee or Paul and rally to Romney — she further fractures an already deeply divided GOP.

Are you enjoying this as much as I am?

Two Obama Conversions

A reader writes:

Yesterday afternoon, a friend called me to catch up.  He told me he was planning to vote for Clinton, but didn’t really have a good reason other than the old “experience” excuse.  He then told me he was persuadable, so I went into all the reasons why I was voting for Obama, then explained why I would not vote for Clinton.  By the time I was done with him, I had him converted.  Just an hour later, my dog walker came by and saw me watching MSNBC.  He and I had virtually the same talk, except he told me that he was worried that Obama doesn’t offer any specifics. I referred him to Obama’s website.  He returned today and told me he had read through much of the information on the site, and was just about ready to switch his vote.  By Tuesday, I’ll have him on the right path, too.

I wonder if this is one of the reasons for Obama’s rising poll numbers.

His supporters are passionate and able to make a compelling case for his candidacy.  Clinton’s supporters are more resigned, or selecting her as a kind of default/pseudo-incumbent: they say they like her “experience” and then they’re out of arguments.  And once you run down all the problems with Hillary, they’re left defenseless, speechless.  I have a feeling the two conversations that played out in my living room yesterday are going on all over the country – and the Obama people are closing the sale for our candidate.

C’mon, Al

Josh Green:

A well-connected Tennesseean told me two things today that got me thinking about this. The first is that Obama and Gore have been speaking regularly, about every two weeks or so. The second is that, despite this, and despite Tennessee’s primary on Tuesday, Obama has not visited the state since June. It may be simply that he does not plan on competing there. Or it may be that he’s been waiting for a special occasion.

Can someone dress up as manbearpig and camp out on his lawn?

Yglesias Award Nominee

"The impossibilist, increasingly unhinged right wing of the party, the latter-day Bourbons who have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing from the past decade, are still a powerful force. They could, if they chose, destroy Mr McCain and the new Republican leadership with a guerrilla campaign for the next nine months.

But they’ll need to be aware that the price for that victory may well be the destruction of the very party they will be claiming to save," – Gerard Baker, The Times.