Yglesias Award Nominee

"Corsi's approach to politics is both destructive and self-destructive. If Senator Obama loses, he should lose on the merits: his record in public life and his political philosophy. And while it's legitimate to take into account Obama's past associations with people like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright -especially for someone like Obama, about whom relatively little is known- it's wrong and reckless to throw out unsubstantiated charges and smears against Senator Obama.

Conservatism has been an intellectual home to people like Burke and Buckley. The GOP is the party that gave us Lincoln and Reagan. It seems to me that its leaders ought to make it clear that they find what Dr. Corsi is doing to be both wrong and repellent. To have their movement and their party associated with such a figure would be a terrible thing and it will only help the cause of those who hold both the GOP and the conservative movement in contempt," - Peter Wehner.

But JPod exults here. And sees the Corsi book's success as a resurgence in the "conservative book market." It was created by Mary Matalin, a person in very good standing with the GOP, who gave her boss's daughter, Mary Cheney, a $500,000 advance for a book only five people read. The sad truth is: this kind of crap is the right's central critique of Obama and no one in the Republican hierarchy will disown it. This is Peter's party. It's admirable that he's saying what he's saying, but he surely must know the slime machine he is riding.