Obamacons & The Obama Con.

A lot of conservatives, even real ones, have endorsed Barack Obama for the presidency. There are times when it is reasonable for a conservative to endorse the left candidate, if for example the right of centre candidate is too extreme or the left of centre candidate is a pragmatic moderate or if the incumbent needs to be punished.

There is no incumbent in this election. The Republicans have nominated a centrist with a long tradition of moderation who until he became the GOP nominee would receive lavish praise from liberals for this trait and his running mate is a governor with a track record of integrity, competent government and pragmatism. Meanwhile the Democrats have nominated the Senator with the most extreme left wing record in that chamber and a running mate who has been wrong on every major issue for three decades (experience isn't much of a virtue if you have no capacity for learning from it).

In other words there is no intellectually coherent reason for conservatives to go gaga over Obama. It can only be seen as bandwagon jumping. In some ways it is reminiscent of the conservatives who flocked ofBlair in the mid 1990s, except that for all his faults Tony Blair actually was on the right of the Labour Party, in the zone where many right of centre figures could feel more at home with his polices than the Tories. Obama isn't an American Tony Blair but an American Tony Benn.

Sure McCain hasn't run his campaign too well but that shouldn't be a factor that knowledgeable people consider too much if they are aware of the respective candidates records.