It doesn't matter which side you are on when election day approaches support your candidate.

You posit that it's better to keep your mouth shut than to point out what is clearly true in some instances. This is a tactical decision if one is wholly dedicated to a "side." If, on the other hand, one is dedicated to ideals and principles, no such rule applies.

Again, advocacy for a candidate does not require non-recognition of the obvious. I maintain that it is strategically wiser to acknowledge and address weaknesses and mistakes than it is to ignore them, or worse, to barrel ahead with a boatload of half-truths and flagrant lies in the hopes that you cross the finish line first. That kind of thinking gave us eight years of George Bush, but it has devastated the republican party in the long term.

And whether individuals on both sides engage in small-minded thinkng is immaterial; it has been the stated policy of the republicans to engage in character assassination and confusion in order to bamboozle the voting public. Enough of that public have now become sufficiently cynical about politics so as not to buy into it again. Pretending otherwise will not restore the brand.

No confusion. Intellectual honesty has a place but giving talking points to the political opposition doesn't make any sense. Between pure intellectual honesty and pure partisan politics there are plenty of reasonable positions to stake out.

If one is dissatisfied with the candidate, the party, or the tactics the appropriate time for discussion would be early on or after the election instead of weeks before. Such talk weakens or further weakens your candidate while strengthening the opposition. It doesn't matter which side you are on when election day approaches support your candidate.

What McCain forgets is Reagan's lesson. Reagan never leaned so far left that the base rejected him. He stood up for something... conservatism, essentially saying' here's where I am. If you want to ride with me, the bus is going this way.

I've been sayingt his should be the Republican attitude. McCain disagreed, so McCain has at best been getting half-hearted support from most Republican, and certainly enjoyed very little support from me, except as James defines it...'my least unfavorite'. As I said elsewhere:

...if we regard government as a nessesary evil, and I think we should, then elections have always come down to which of the choices is the least evil.

Such was the driver, for example of my choice to support W for POTUS. He’s at best a centrist, as I have been saying forever... but his is a far less evil choice than Kerry or Gore.

By the same token, McCain, while I’m not overly happy about it, is a far less evil choice than is Obama.

On the other hand, we have...

to play the role of Bill Kristol, i.e., to throw yourself wholeheartedly behind a ticket notwithstanding its clear shortcomings and to provide any (any!) line of reasoning depending on what the issue of the day as to why your team is better than the other team, is transparently self-interested and does nothing so much as demean and discredit the speaker.

Well, gee... you mean Obama's supporters haven't been doing that?

NB: You are starting to sound like the WaPo.

Part of being a team player is minimizing the complaints and not grousing about leadership. There's a time and place for constructive criticism and a time to be quiet.

You're confusing intellectual honesty with partisan politics. This is not an "either/or" proposition - true conservatives can remain ideologically pure and still be brutal in their criticism of the republican party (and the same can be said of liberals and the democrats). I, for one, think that James has consistently offered about the strongest case for McCain that intellectually honest individuals of any stripe can respect - that for all of the obvious weaknesses with the ticket, that its limiting effect on the passage of liberal policies is a net plus for the country. I happen to disagree with him, but that is an argument and a point of view that the most ideologically liberal person can appreciate and respect.

On the other hand, to play the role of Bill Kristol, i.e., to throw yourself wholeheartedly behind a ticket notwithstanding its clear shortcomings and to provide any (any!) line of reasoning depending on what the issue of the day as to why your team is better than the other team, is transparently self-interested and does nothing so much as demean and discredit the speaker. It is this as much as anything else that has turned the American people against the republican party, and only those who are deeply invested in continuing the obfuscatory and disingenuous tactics of the current administration and its apologists fail to understand this point. From a tactical standpoint, Obama gets it; McCain clearly does not (or did not until it was too late to discard his poorly-chosen handlers).

That said, seeing the writing on the wall (as George Will, et al, clearly have) does not equate with intellectual honesty. Nevertheless, it's still a step up from Bithead-esque rantings about how the other guy is a terrorist.

VDH is pointing out those who openly complain undermine the party based upon their minor disappointments. Sure he's over playing the stereotypes with Proust readers on one side but he counters with shotguns and snow machines on the other. Not accurate but illustrative none the less.

Like fair weather football fans who cheer their team on the good days but boo the loudest when times are tough the intellectual conservatives seem to have forgotten how to properly support the team. Hanson's pointing this out is what I would call a teaching opportunity.

Look, as you yourself indicated, these elections are all about picking the lesser of multiple evils. You pick your candidate and go with him/her, to the finish, warts and all. You don't bail when things get difficult.

This is exactly what the Dems did about Iraq. They were behind it until things got difficult, and then they were more than happy to stab the President in the back.

VDH's column is directed at those who now appear to be happy to do the same to McCain.

i'm a big fan of competition and choice, which is why i'm hoping that the republican party will find its way away from some of the uglier elements that have arisen in this election campaign, and return to some of the values i thought the republican party stood for, such as small government, and a reasonably free market.

i found the palin choice choice rather underwhelming. your country and the rest of the world, are facing huge problems at this point in time, both economic and geopolitical, and i feel that as much as possible, we need heavyweights at the helm, people able to reason through the complex issues facing all of us today.