Buckley In His Own Words

Christopher Buckley on leaving his father's publication:

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.

Sounds like what I've been saying for six years. My book, "The Conservative Soul," unpacks Buckley's quote and tries to offer an explanation for the bizarre change: a toxic combination of fundamentalism and cynicism.