I'm reserving judgment until I can read the Times's article -- or at least the relevant excerpt -- for myself. But tain't looking good.

In the meantime, a little light reading.

bugmenot registration for article:

googles21/googles

I quit reading Sullivan some time ago. He has been edging toward a Kerry endorsement for weeks now. I didn't stop reading him because of that, I stopped reading him when I realized Sullivan was a fool. At first, he claims to be unable to support Bush for a single, mundane reason, while claiming he agrees with the President on so many other issues. Soon, there is another mundane reason, while still manitaining he supports a lot of what Bush is about. Pretty soon he has embraced the entire liberal agenda. He, like Kerry, is a pretender. He writes well, but well written garbage is still garbage.

No one saw THIS coming!

I can't get it to work. Is an excerpt out of the question?

OK, now for the $64 question:

Who gives a rat's ass?

I'm totally surprised. You could knock me over with a feather.

And since "conservative" has been redefined to match much of Kerry's agenda, I hereby redefine "feather" to mean "a lead brick the size of a fucking Escalade."

Sullivan. Huh. Can't say as I've ever heard of him...is he related to that other what's-his-name, Jesse Jackson?

Ace,

Wow.

Kerry is the choice for conservative voters.

Right.

wow. (lowercase intentional)

...

Solipsism.

Not much else to say.

Sullivan is not honest. Sullivan was fine with Bush (no, not that way) until the Mass SC engaged in the liberal's idea of democracy by in effect legalizing gay marriage.

A lot of people were unhappy. But no one is really trying to ban gay marriage, but to simply not have it shoved down their throats by leftist judges. Sullivan won't admit it, but now that he has seen what the courts can do, he wants courts all over the country to shove it down our throats. Sullivan knows laws allowing gay marriage would never pass, even in the liberal states like Mass, but they don't need to if judges do it.

And another thing...why does Sullivan feel the psychological need for the government's stamp of approval on his relationships? What is the f'ing big deal?

You said "bear". Heh.

Oh, well, there goes GWB's chance of bringing in the conservative, Catholic, HIV+, barebacking, gay-marriage-loving vote. Always kind of a small slice of the voting public -- actually Sullivan may be it.

Sullivan's not a conservative. He's not even on the right. He's a soft leftist who thought that all of America is like Greenwich Village. What? Some people use "Jesus" in a non-ironic sentence and try to observe most of the tenets of their faith? Under Sullivan's rules, the founding fathers were "theoconservatives." 'Scuse me, but raising taxes to "balance a budget" is not stuff that "fiscal conservatives" do. That's what Democrats say when you call them "tax and spenders." Goes on and on. Had me fooled for a while, though.

Like many, I stopped reading him when it became apparent that he used the same invective on the social right as, say, the Taliban. No thanks. And he has less clout than many think he does; a great weight went off my mind when a very well-read blogger friend of mine noted that "You know, I really don't read him." Don't believe the hype.

Kerry's the conservative choice. Right. And Amiri Baraka ought to be an ambassador to Israel.

Andrew seems to have an odd definition of conservative - if you want to return to the 9/10 status quo you're 'conservative', but if you deviate from it, you're now a 'liberal'.

To me the most damning quote is this:
"At home Bush has done much to destroy the coherence of a conservative philosophy of American government and he has been almost criminally reckless in his conduct of the war. He and America will never live down the intelligence debacle of the missing WMDs. He and America will be hard put to regain the moral high ground after Abu Ghraib."

So acting on faulty intelligence (that most of the world's governments possibly including Saddam himself believed to be true at the time) and the actions of a few yahoo guards in Baghdad have sullied America's reputation forever. Puhleeze.

Either Andrew had a distorted, over-idealized view of America before, or he's now struggling to rationalize why he's now supporting the candidate whose positions do not match up with his previous passionately expressed views.

Cognitive dissonance - thy name is Andrew Sullivan.

Of course, it isn't like Kerry is for gay marriage, either, so that is a red herring on Sullivan's part.

Having skimmed the article myself, it's easy to see why neither Maureen Lopez, nor George, nor Ace has actually provided a quotation that involves an actual endorsement. My further remarks are in this comment thread.

Doug:

Are you trying to suggest that gay left-libertarians are a critical component in the Republican coalition?

Gay marriage upsets both social and economic conservatives. Social conservatives are obviously dismayed, and most economic conservatives hate judicial activism. Andrew Sullivan is not going to move the party towards his position. Sorry.

I stopped reading Sullivan once the posts on gay marriage/gay issues outnumbered other posts 10 to 1. I'm just not interested.

Doug,

"Put all that together and I may not find myself the only conservative moving slowly and reluctantly towards the notion that Kerry may be the right man — and the conservative choice — for a difficult and perilous time."

Emphasis mine.

Skimming not withstanding, this is an endorsement of Kerry for president.

No, Sullivan does not say, "Ladies and Gentlemen, I am endorsing John Forbes Kerry for President of the United States," but neither does he have to, yet.

Sullivan has been for some time, slowly in his own words, been working toward this endorsement. Ace and I have disagreed as to whether or not Sullivan has been a "shill" for Kerry, but there is no disagreement as to his not-so-tacit or veiled push for Kerry.

And no, it is not defensible to think that Kerry will in any way be "better at nation building than Bush" or be in any way more restrained with regard to government spending, the raising of taxes, more open than Bush to allowing gay marriage (although admittedly I can't see how Kerry will fight or impede future judicial fiat), nor in any way imaginable be able to more fully and effectively prosecute the war against radical Islamic terror vis-a-vis improved relationships with France, the UN, blue-ribbon panels, or other ham-fisted jargon.

Sullivan's raison d'etre is gay marriage, plain and simple, which is his right, I might add. But the reluctant nature of his choosing Kerry over Bush is based (if on anything at all) solely on his demonization of conservative and other Americans who will not abide by his desire to allow it by way of judicial activism. Sullivan knows all too well, that the only chance of their being gay marriage in this generation is to bypass the electorate, either at the state or federal level. It is a cynical ploy to portray his terrible hedge on hoping that Kerry will go easy on activist lawmaking from the bench against the successful protection of our national security.

By way of comparison, here's Sullivan in the Advocate article to which Allahpundit links in his comment above. Sullivan said, "In other words, Kerry’s opposition to our right to marry is potentially more damaging than Bush’s...." I'm telling you again, as I said in the other thread, Sullivan is nobody's fan and nobody's follower. I'm considerably to the right of him, myself, and he often makes me seethe for that reason, but I respect him much more than I do most writers on these partisan fan sites, because he's his own man.

As for endorsements, my best intuition today is that Sullivan is going to conclude with a two-fold statement before the election. To the lesbian and gay crowd, he'll say, "Bush is gay-baiter, he treats the Constitution like a playground, and he's utterly dependent on a base that hates your guts. For the near future, at least, it would be ridiculous for me to try to get you to look at the Republicans. I acknowledge that you cannot do otherwise than to vote for Kerry." For his general audience, I think he'll list the deficiencies of both candidates, which he evidently thinks are huge, and conclude, "No endorsement."

Doug,

Ouch.

I'm not my own man?

And ouch again "No endorsement"?

Which part of making the ackowledgement to one set of partisan fans, in this case, his gay-lesbian-transgendered fans, is not an endorsement to anyone else?

Are his non-GLT fans entitled to knowing how he feels?

I hate to always seem to be coming to Ace's defense, but at least on this partisan fan site there has been, I believe, the appropriate measure of taking Sullivan to task for his disingenuous, if not frankly dishonest, stand on the issue of his preference for POTUS.

....the one issue that obviously drives him (to distraction, and then back again)?

Wish my commute was that short!

the only conservative moving slowly and reluctantly towards

Can't you just feel the reluctance?

Sullivan's been moving about as slowly and reluctantly as Oliver Willis toward a Filet-o-Fish.

"and return to pre-9/11 notions of terrorism, best dealt with by police work in co-ordination with our democratic allies. "

Hence the "pre" in 9/11.

Howard Stern is an even bigger opportunist than Sullivan. Howie was all for the war in Iraq until the FCC started in on him. Now he endorses the Michael Moore conspiracy idiocy.

(Aside to MeTooThen: My comment of 6:59 wasn't a reply to yours of 6:56, which I hadn't yet read. My remarks on independence vs. fanship were made in an "if-the-shoe-fits" way and since I don't have a general recollection of your views or way of writing, I don't know that the remarks are applicable to you at all.)

This article is readily understood as part of the strategy that Sullivan, as a center rightist, must be expected to employ. A center rightist must be expected to try to detach President Bush from the religious right and to try to detach Kerry from the left. In his concluding paragraphs, Sullivan goes to work on Kerry in just that way:

The argument that Kerry must make is that he can continue the war but without Bush’s polarising recklessness. And at home he must reassure Americans that he is the centrist candidate, controlled neither by the foaming Michael Moore left nor by the vitriolic religious right.

Put all that together and I may not find myself the only conservative moving slowly and reluctantly towards the notion that Kerry may be the right man — and the conservative choice — for a difficult and perilous time. (Emphasis added.)

That's a tall order for Kerry. It's hard to imagine his suddenly evincing any great ability to carry on the war against Islamic terrorism, whether "recklessly" or otherwise. It's hard to imagine his credibly detaching himself from his base in "the foaming Michael Moore left," in such a way as to convince anyone that he was doing more than just lying to get votes. It's true that if Kerry could "put all that together," just that much, he'd get a more respectful hearing from people who aren't hard right or hard left.

But can anyone imagine his putting even that much together? Sullivan's concluding paragraph isn't an endorsement at all, but it is a pretty ridiculous hypothetical. If anyone wanted to laugh at Sullivan for proposing that Kerry could actually move that far rightward, I'd be right there, laughing along with you. Even so, my serious appraisal would be that he was really talking to intelligent center-leftists who might be expected to find a way to jettison the hard left in the long run.

K-Lo got this whole "endorsement" train rolling and I wouldn't trust K-Lo to interpret her way out of a wet paper bag. Really, she just does not strike me as being one of the brightest lights in the NRO firmament. Everyone was so eager to believe that Sullivan had finally made the long-awaited endorsement of Kerry, they jumped on without giving her notion a critical appraisal.

Doug,

Please.

Pretty please.

Pretty please with a cherry on top.

As Ol' Dirty Bastard might say, niggah please.

Please.

I implore you.

I'm begging you.

Please, please, please stop with this nonsense.

You know, for someone talking up the difference between "independence" and "fanship," you do seem to have a rather pronounced fanboy admiration of Sullivan.

Sullivan's been moving about as slowly and reluctantly as Oliver Willis toward a Filet-o-Fish.

Delicious!

Actually, no, it's more that this sort of fencing is mentally engaging, but still fun, because it doesn't confront me with my own limitations to quite the same degree as trying to understand what on earth Aristotle was getting at with all the talk about "the active intellect." There are other things I should be doing, but that shit's really hard, so I'm procrastinating.

But you're right to wonder why I would pick the topic of Sullivan as opposed to, say, trade relations with Mexico. I think the choice has something to do with the fact that I've been trying to square the circle of being to the right of most Republicans in many respects and yet being the Republicans' bete noire through being queer and basically atheist. I think this business of trying to reason with Republicans about Sullivan is a sort of lab experiment for me. The results seem to be reinforcing my detachment, something for which I suppose I should be grateful. After all, the philosophers starting with Plato have considered themselves to be individually in a state of foreign policy with everyone else, something I had started to forget.

At any rate, Ace, you didn't address my arguments. You don't have to, of course, but it would be more of a challenge for you than what you wrote. In a way, I don't have a dog in this fight, so in a way, I don't care about the outcome. If you manage to convince me that Sullivan isn't a center-rightist or centrist trying to drag both sides to the middle, I won't hold it against you. Of course, hardcore Sully-baiting is likely to do more for your raw traffic numbers than will a quiet discussion with me. But you don't partake of the modern defect of disregarding whatever cannot be reduced to number, do you?

He[Kerry] has spent decades in the Senate building an undistinguished but nuanced record

Oooh, nuanced, that's gotta be good right? Probably completely trumps undistiguished or wishy-washy or crappy.

Sully says: The argument that Kerry must make is that he can continue the war but without Bush’s polarising recklessness. And at home he must reassure Americans that he is the centrist candidate, controlled neither by the foaming Michael Moore left nor by the vitriolic religious right.

Then Doug says: That's a tall order for Kerry.

??? Really? I expect that the bulk of the DNC will be spent doing exactly what Sully asks and will end with Sully, and perhaps Doug, issuing breathlessly excited endorsements of the New! Improved! Now with Conservative Credibility! John Kerry!

Sully has been playing in the blogosphere as long as it payed his bills. No doubt he has pulled a "David Brock", looking to change sides (again) to improve his prospects with the left mainstream media from whence he came.

Two years ago, Sully was hot and popular and he was able to turn that celebrity with the sane into $$$ during his blog's pledge drive.

Once he became Johnny-one-note concerning all things gay, last year's numbers could only indicate to Sully that a two-wheeled U-turn was necessary for his financial future. Dems love nothing better than a sinner who sees the light AND is willing to tell stories out-of-school about the dark side. He can title it "The Bridges of P-Town" or some other meaningful mush.

Doug,

True, I didn't address your arguments, but your argument is just that he didn't quite say "I hereby formally endorse Kerry for President."

You are correct that he did not make such a clear statement. (But what else is new from Sully?)

What he said was:

"Put all that together and I may not find myself the only conservative moving slowly and reluctantly towards the notion that Kerry may be the right man — and the conservative choice — for a difficult and perilous time."

This is a semantic argument, which is why I didn't bother "addressing" it. You say this isn't an endorsement; I say it is. I mean, there's not a whole lot of analysis we can pour into this.

I would offer an analogy, though.

Let's say you have suspected for some time there is a bear in your kitchen.

You hear bear-like growling coming from near the dishwasher.

The air is full of a smell you think might just be wet bear fur.

You find bear-prints to and from your refrigerator.

Near the door to the kitchen is a pile of stool that is too big to have come from anything smaller than a moose. And you see some salmon-bones mixed in with the droppings.

Now, here's where we diverge:

You are saying there's not necessarily a bear in the kitchen, because he hasn't announced himself and shaken your hand.

I am saying that while the bear hasn't done so, there is an awful lot of evidence suggesting an ursine interloper in the breakfast nook, and not one iota of evidence -- other than your wishful thinking -- that there isn't.

Near the door to the kitchen is a pile of stool that is too big to have come from anything smaller than a moose. And you see some salmon-bones mixed in with the droppings.

Well this would have to be evidence that there is NOT a bear in the kitchen, because, as we all know, a bear shits in the woods. Perhaps there is a Pope in Doug's kitchen?

Yes.

By the way, I think there are two Dougs posting here, one who agrees with me on Andrew Sullivan, another who disagrees strongly.

To avoid confusion, I think the doug who agrees with me should continue calling himself "Doug."

The Doug who disagrees with me should call himself "Head-up-His-Ass Evil-Twin Garth Doug."

Just to avoid confusion, you understand.

shows you how important the issues are to Sullivan, he abandons Bush as soon as anything dealing with Andy's sexuality begins to get more traction than the war against those who would see Andy dead for his orientation. . .

gotta love how important matters of conservatism and liberalism are more important that the protection of America.

Doug: Can you possibly be serious, or is there some sort of meta-sarcasm going on here?

I ask because you cite Sullivan's two-facedness (his willingness to say one thing to gays and another to everybody else) and his short-sightedness (his willingness to use his (IMO wildly overestimated by him, you and everybody else who's mentioned it) clout to hurt the only presidential candidate who is serious about the war because of gay-frickin-marriage) not as errors, or weaknesses, but as reasons to give him the "greatest hero in american history" treatment.

One suspects that, like Sullivan harping on Abu Ghraib, you would have picked something else as "evidence" for your position anyway.

Also, please shut up with the "interjections" about philosophy. It only makes you look like you've got some size issues of the upstairs variety.

"Stalinist gay-left tradition"

With ridiculous rhetoric like that, I suspected this was going to be a load of uninformed, uneducated BS. But I still gave it a chance. That's ten minutes of my life I'll never get back.

>

Bye.

Doug,

I hope that "Bye" was to MD, and not to me.

I had hoped you would take the "Head up His Ass Evil-Twin Garth Doug" as the playful joke it was intended as. I wrote it with a smile; I didn't mean it to be a genuine insult. I hoped the "Evil-Twin Garth Doug" part of it would signal it was meant kiddingly.

But, if you did take offense, this wouldn't be the first time one of my jokes was taken as an insult. I pissed off Jim Treacher and Michele from ASV by calling them "dummies." Another case where a "j/k" or "(g)" or even a (rrrrrggh) ":>" might have helped signal that I was just joshing.

While you disagree with me on this issue, and while I am honestly frustrated by your commitment to defending Sullivan even as he becomes, as predicted, an unabashedly partisan liberal Democrat, I sure wouldn't want to lose you as a reader nor especially as a correspondent/commenter.

If I was out of line, I apologize. As I said to Jim Treacher and Michele Catalano when I pissed them off, it is my habit to greet friends by saying, "Hey, what's up, douchebag."

Once again I am reminded of the fact that one's facial expressions don't come through the written word. I might just have to start using those dreaded "j/k" and "(g)" thingees.

MD,

With ridiculous rhetoric like that, I suspected this was going to be a load of uninformed, uneducated BS. But I still gave it a chance. That's ten minutes of my life I'll never get back.

Thanks! Make sure to hit the TipJar, buddy!

"But, if you did take offense, this wouldn't be the first time one of my jokes was taken as an insult. I pissed off Jim Treacher and Michele from ASV by calling them 'dummies.'"

Not so much "pissed off," as "Huh, what's up with that?" Plus, I'd just been called an "asshole" for not capitulating to Micah Wright's demands, so maybe I thought that was more of the same. And until I read this just now, I didn't connect the screen name "ace" with ace.mu.nu.