O No: After the Man Crush

Looks like some ObamaCons are suffering post Big O letdown...

Peter Robinson, in Forbes, observes how the ecstasy has turned to agony for three famous ObamaCons: David Gergen, Christopher Buckley, and David Brooks. They found themselves swept up in Obamania, enraptured by the idea of a moderate philosopher king to salve the nation's latigo wounds, left bleeding by the reckless Cowboy Bush.

Robinson chalks it up to "the cluelessness of the elites."

Contrast Buckley, Gergen and Brooks with, let us say, Rush Limbaugh, whose appearance at any chic cocktail party would cause the hostess to faint dead away, or with Thomas Sowell, who occupies probably the most unfashionable position in the country, that of a black conservative.

Limbaugh and Sowell both got Obama right from the very get-go. "Just what evidence do you have," Sowell replied when I asked, shortly before the election, whether he considered Obama a centrist, "that he's anything but a hard-left ideologue?"

The elite journalists, I repeat, got Obama wrong. The troglodytes got him right. As our national drama continues to unfold, bear that in mind.

Todd Zywicki at Volokh Conspiracy thinks the Declasse' Sarah Palin repulsed these well-manicured metrosexuals, driving them into the arms of Mr. Obama.

I don't know that I would agree with Peter that the main problem here is the cluelessnes of the elite, although that is at least part of it. ... the polite establishment position was to distance oneself from the yahoos in the Republican Party in favor of the urbane Obama (although I'm not quite sure how Joe Biden fits in here).

Whatever the motivation, the desire of many to believe that Obama was a moderate was really just a triumph of wishful thinking and a desire to believe that was true, rather than any actual facts.

Those foolish elites. First Bernie Madoff and now this. Financially and politically fleeced. Even a hayseed like me knows that if it walks like a liberal, and quacks like a liberal, and most importantly, votes like a liberal…

http://volokh.com/posts/1236368924.shtml
http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/05/buckley-gergen-brooks-opinions-columnists-obama-liberal.html