GOP slides right; Birthers deserve Birchers's fate

Dennis Lennox, a conservative commentator from mid-Michigan, writes in today’s Mount Pleasant Morning Sun that he’s increasingly concerned about the rightward turn of the “conservative movement” since 2004.

Lennox worries that conservative Republicans could be marginalized in the public mind – and defeated at the ballot box – if the “narrow-minded strain of thought” pushing the party further to the right prevails. He cites two of his conservative movement heroes, William F. Buckley Jr. and Russell Kirk, to argue that action must be taken to stay on target.

Here’s a piece of his column:

“The movement in the days of Buckley and Kirk rightly expelled the Birchers with their loony conspiracy theories. It also came together under the Buckley rule to support the most electable conservative.
 “Regretfully, some of these conservative pretenders have been repatriated even though they have no legitimate place in the movement or the Republican Party.
 

“I never thought I would see once credible conservatives pander to the Birthers and Know Nothings — the hermits who wear tin foil hats and believe their local government is taking orders from the United Nations.
“Conservatives cannot allow themselves to be corrupted by those who defame Republicanism and good conservatives to pursue an agenda fundamentally at odds with the central tenets of conservatism.”

You can read more here.