Obamacons

For a while now, we've seen the phenomenon of various "conservatives" or prominent people who for some reason ought to be aligned with the Republican Presidential candidate supporting Obama. Off the top of my head, there's Doug Kmiec, Wick Allison, Christopher Buckley, Jeffrey Hart, Kenneth Adelman, Colin Powell and several formerly rightish libertarians. On top of that, David Frum, Peggy Noonan, and Quin Hillyer have been publicly critical of the selection of Sarah Palin while still supporting the Republican ticket on balance.

And just now I've figured out why, and figured out why I've never been strongly tempted to be one of them. Essentially, for most or all of the people above, there is strong resentment against, say, Sean Hannity and the sort of media figure he represents, and Sarah Palin and who she represents. So these, above all else, want to repudiate the Hannity-Palin axis. This is most depressing in the case of Anne Applebaum, a very thoughtful woman whose reasoning on behalf of Obama is specious to the point of embarrassment.

I can see why some people don't like Sean Hannity very much, though I personally don't watch much of Fox News. But for all our current problems, Sarah Palin and the people who support her are about as blameless as it's humanly possible to be, and represent a substantial part of our hope in America.