James Dobson sells out

By Rick Morris

I am very disappointed by the recent decision of James Dobson to throw his support behind Objectively Unfit Mitt in the Republican presidential race, although I am not surprised. I criticized him previously for his ivory-tower babbling about wanting a real conservative choice in the race while he was choosing to publicly stab in the back the only viable candidate who fit that bill, Fred Thompson. His refusal to support the best man for the job because of what amounted to personal egotistical pique about Big Fred not puckering up and kissing Old Rosey exposes his decision as the complete and utter hypocrisy that it is.

For the millionth time, I get the fact that a lot of conservatives don’t like John McCain. I was strongly for Fred before and I’m only for McCain now in the sense that the other members of the “Final Four” of major presidential contenders on both sides are completely unacceptable to me. But haven’t these right-wing leaders, most of whom are moderately-to-significantly older than me, been around long enough to know that Option B isn’t always preferable just because Option A sucks? The world isn’t this simple. It is possible to acknowledge that John McCain leaves much to be desired as a candidate and still admit that Trust Fund Willard is the absolute pits. As I’ve said previously, you pretty much know what you’re getting with McCain and I’d rather be stabbed in the front than the back. Given some of the conservatives who have endorsed him and are rumored to be the leading contenders in terms of shaping policy in a McCain Administration, I’m also not in complete despair about what might come out of it, either.

As asinine as Ann Coulter’s diatribe about how she’d prefer President Hillary to President McCain was (and that pains me to say as I have several of Ann’s books and I respect the fact that she’s got more guts than almost any other commentator on the scene), at least it’s intellectually coherent. She feels that the country would be better off suffering the pain of a third Clinton Administration before taking a figurative laxative in 2012. At least that decision of hers makes more sense than her ill-considered endorsement of Romney just because he’s McCain’s only remaining major opponent on the GOP side. If anyone feels that the country would be better off with Hillary winning the White House or that there would be no difference whatsoever between her and McCain as president – well, I can disagree strongly with that and point to any number of facts to back up my view, but I wouldn’t disrespect it like I do the Know-Nothingism of the childish “We’re For Romney Just Because He’s Not McCain Brigade.”

James Dobson, like National Review, has a strong legacy of working to improve public policy in this country. Like National Review and so many other “conservative leaders,” he’s betraying that legacy with his hypocrisy and he should be ashamed of himself.