He may be "influential," for those who like his persuasive banter, but he's more of a follower than a leader. He was a real cheerleader for that lunacy known as the Iraq War, and that was just curious as hell to me. That whole "thoughtful conservative--I'm not like THOSE guys" act just doesn't work on me. And the "I'm gonna make you love me" drumbeat vis a vis Roman Catholicism is just the strangest tack he continues to take.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Sullivan (read the whole thing, it's an eye-opener)...
As a youth Sullivan was a fervent fan of Margaret Thatcher and later Ronald Reagan. He says of that time, "what really made me a right-winger was seeing the left use the state to impose egalitarianism—on my school",[25] after the Labour government tried to merge his school for bright children with the local comprehensive. At Oxford he became friends with future prominent conservatives, William Hague and Niall Ferguson and became involved with Conservative party politics.[25]
From 1980 through 2002 he supported the Republican presidential candidate in the United States.[25] In 2004, he supported John Kerry's presidential campaign after losing faith in George W. Bush after the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal and what he saw as incompetent management of the occupation of Iraq.[25] Sullivan, among a number of other conservative writers, endorsed Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 US Presidential Election, and Rep. Ron Paul for the Republican nomination. He eventually endorsed Obama for President largely becaue he believed that he would restore "the rule of law and Constitutional balance," as well as representing a more realistic prospect for "bringing America back to fiscal reason" and a hope that Obama would be able to "get us past the culture war."[34] He has continued to maintain that Obama is in fact the best choice for president from a conservative point of view. During the 2012 election campaign he wrote, "Against a radical right, reckless, populist insurgency, Obama is the conservative option, dealing with emergent problems with pragmatic calm and modest innovation. He seeks as a good Oakeshottian would to reform the country's policies in order to regain the country's past virtues. What could possibly be more conservative than that?"[35]
Sullivan has declared support for Arnold Schwarzenegger[36] and other like-minded Republicans.[37][38] He believes that the Republican party, and much of the conservative movement in the United States has largely abandoned its earlier skepticism and moderation in favor of a more fundamentalist certainty, both in religious and political terms.[39] This is the primary source of his alienation from the modern GOP.[40]
....Sullivan opposes hate crime laws, arguing that they undermine freedom of speech and equal protection.[45] He also opposes the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, arguing that it will, "not make much of a difference" and stated that the "gay rights establishment" was wrong to oppose a version of the bill that did not include gender identity.[46]
I spent decades in a military uniform, but I came down on the side of the "Decadent Left" (his words) when it came to that clusterfuck in Iraq--and that was BEFORE I learned that Bush didn't know--and no one, apparently, told him--that there were more than one "flavor" of Muslim residing in Iraq, and that he had no knowledge of the Shi'a-Sunni divide.
= new reply since forum marked as read
oh my god, my gut is splitting with laughter... excellent response!
