Head Strong: Floodgates of criticism spread wide
Republican backed Obama, and the party went wild.
10.26.08
The floodgates of criticism opened before my endorsement of Barack Obama was even published last Sunday.
I gave my talk-radio audience a two-day advance warning of my decision while asking that they read what I had written.
More than 500 people weighed in immediately, unwilling to consider my argument before criticizing its conclusion.
"You made up your mind a long time ago, you rat," one wrote to me. "Either you have no core beliefs, or you are just like all the other elitist Main Line snobs. My guess is both," wrote another. "Smerconish, you're one awful, greedy, shameless ratings hog. . . . You traded your soul for socialism," said a detractor.
By the time the column actually reached the newsstand, my critics numbered more than 1,000. Naively, I thought there would be a slight change in the tide when the column actually ran, especially once former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Sen. Obama based on reasons uncannily similar to my own. No luck. An additional 1,000 angry e-mails came in the 24 hours that followed publication.
And, the tone of the objectors actually escalated. Missing from most, however, was any reference to the argument I had advanced: Barack Obama properly recognizes that the central front in the war on terror is the Afghan-Pakistan border, not Iraq; he has more intellectual capacity to deal with the economy than the guy who said its fundamentals were "strong"; Sarah Palin is not ready to be president; Obama represents a role model for black youth, too many of whom are growing up and killing one another; and he presents the best opportunity to unite us after the election and restore our prestige around the globe.
All that fell mostly on deaf ears. Instead, people wondered how I could ever consider voting for a "Marxist" or "socialist" candidate like Sen. Barack "Hussein" Obama.
Those few willing to engage in substance said Obama's associations made him unfit to lead the country. A large bloc held me in contempt for acting as an enabler for a liberal trinity of Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Others questioned my two decades of loyalty to Maureen Faulkner, the widow of slain Philadelphia policeman Daniel Faulkner, by tying Obama to Weather Underground founder William Ayers and Ayers to Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted in 1982 of killing Officer Faulkner. I co-authored Mrs. Faulkner's book, Murdered by Mumia.
I also got a look at the best and worst my day job has to offer. One conservative talk-show host invited me onto his program. At the outset, Mike Gallagher told me he hoped things would not get "personal" between us, which I thought odd given that I wanted to talk issues. He did discuss Palin, and actually told me that surely Americans like her based on the Saturday Night Live ratings. (Two days later, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed that 55 percent think she is unqualified.)
He continued to talk about me long after I was gone, and lumped me with Colin Powell, saying we'd "betrayed their party and their beliefs and their ideology and this country." His demonization was classic, textbook talking-points radio, all the things that have caused our medium to exclude so many.
Bill O'Reilly represented the best in the spirit of debate. On his radio program, he wanted to talk issues and challenge my beliefs, and did. He also said this:
"I think you are an American and you're entitled to vote for who you want to. I don't think people should be e-mailing you and telling you you're a traitor or anything else. But I have some questions about the endorsement." And so he asked them.
On Hardball, Chris Matthews properly noted my "consistency" in drawing attention to our government's failure to avenge the deaths of 3,000 Americans on 9/11. It's true. I have addressed that subject in columns, my radio show, and television appearances for three years now.
I took solace in the fact that two days after my column was published, it was still the most popular item at Philly.com. Hopefully that meant other people were reading what I had written, not just papering cages with my work.
Not all the correspondence I received was hatriolic. There were a few like-minded Republicans who think John McCain has ceded too much ground to the periphery of our party to get elected.
These are the folks I'm hoping are ready to begin a battle for the future of the Republican Party. I want to advance a suburban manifesto as a means of expanding the tent of the GOP. It calls for remaining tough on Islamic fundamentalists while staying out of people's personal lives and rejecting the electoral strategy of using social issues to stoke the base.
There are many of us who were appalled by efforts to have the federal government determine Terri Schiavo's end-of-life plan, who want to find room in our party for pro-life and choice views and believe that what two guys do in their bedroom is their own business. We're tired of the "liberal" or "conservative" labeling game, and find "reasonable" a better descriptor.
Which is why I won't be bullied by the nasty, doctrinaire types who've had a stranglehold on the GOP for far too long. My work is just beginning.