Ethics

Jeffrey Hart: Republicans the "Stupid Party"

By Ed Brayton

You probably don't know who Jeffrey Hart is, but political junkies like me know. He is one of the key founders of modern American conservatism. Not only was he there virtually at the start of the National Review, he also founded the Dartmouth Review, a conservative student paper that launched the careers of, among others, Dinesh D'Souza and Laura Ingraham. He was also a speechwriter for both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

Over the last few years, disenchanted with what he considers the Bush administration's failure to uphold conservative principles, he has become a rather scathing critic of the Republican party, endorsing both John Kerry and Barack Obama. He is a true intellectual conservative in the Burkean mold and he is appalled by what the Republican party has done under the guise of the philosophy he advocates (which, once again, helps demonstrate the difference between intellectual conservatism and political or pedestrian conservatism).

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on November 11, 2008 (boomark / email).