For Maverick before he was against him

Christopher Buckley -- Bill Buckley's son --recently endorsed Obama. But back in February, he was slamming conservatives who refused to get in line behind John McCain:

It may strike some conservatives today as odd, if not absurd, to see John McCain being subjected to an auto-da-fé conducted by such Torquemadas of the right as Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity. The other day, he even endured jeers at a conservative gathering in Washington, by otherwise well-behaved exemplars of conservatism. Indeed, turn on the TV at any hour of the day and you’ll find Mr. McCain being excoriated in harsher terms than he endured from his jailers at the Hanoi Hilton -- variously denounced as a) not conservative, b) really, really not conservative, or even c) so not-conservative as to make you wonder if he isn’t just the latest re-issue of the Manchurian Candidate.
In response, let me offer a thoughtful, considered, carefully worded comment: Would you all please just...shut...up? (I’d insert an intensifier, but this is a family newspaper.)

Why was Buckley so enthusiastically pro-McCain in February? Open borders:

It’s also true -- odd -- that Mr. McCain is popular among Hispanic voters, who are themselves paradigms of cultural conservatism and without whose support any "conservative" candidate for president may be doomed to failure. . . . Is the "conservative" position on immigration that the only solution is a wall and midnight roundups by Border Patrol agents at Wal-Mart?

Virtually everything in those two sentence is wrong. John McCain is not popular among Hispanic voters, who are not paradigms of cultural conservatism (e.g., Hispanics have higher rates of abortion and out-of-wedlock births). The notion that Republicans can win the votes of Hispanic citizens by pandering on illegal immigration is not supported by data. Notice, however, that the word "illegal" is not part of Buckley's terminology.

I was never a John McCain supporter (I'm voting for Bob Barr), but I have been consistently anti-Obama. Friends don't let friends vote Democrat. Buckley was only for McCain when the McCain campaign was sticking its thumbs in the eyes of Rush, Coulter, et al.