I Haven't Left the Republican Party. It Left Me.

Christopher Buckley has resigned from National Review, the magazine his father founded. There's apparently some disagreement about whether he was pushed out. But Buckley says he has taken quite a bit of heat from movement conservatives for endorsing Barack Obama.

Let's leave aside just how persuasive his case was for Obama, as against voting for John McCain and focus on Buckley's thought's about the state of American conservatism and the Republican Party in the 21st century:

While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.

So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.