Centerfield

Kaus declared for Kerry a while back and announced he was sending a campaign donation, but Hitchens' decision is a surprise. Just last week he wrote an article titled "Why I'm (Slightly) for Bush."

Hitchens is a flip flopper. :)

Sorry...LOL..it had to be said.

I don't consider Hitchens to be a flip-flopper. Instead, I consider his recent transformation of the past four years to mirror many centrists' in the Democratic Party. Hitchens eventually would never indorse a candidate who proposed a constitutional ban on same sex marriages, who openly endorses extra-funding for faith based institutions, and further deregulated the telecommunications industry. His waivering on a Kerry endorsement, I believe, comes as a result of personal conflict in observing the American Left's abandonment of its Human Rights philosophy in the build up to war in Iraq and utter venom in its effots to defeat President Bush. In 2002, Hitchens publicly inquired of the Left, "Haven't we been trying to have Saddam Hussein tried as a War Criminal and dethroned for twenty years?" (paraphrasing). He realized the irony of the Left's rejection of Bush's Wilsonian vision. He noted with puzzlement the fact that it had been Liberals and the Left who had been advocating greater American involvment in spreading human rights and democracy across the world, including through the use of military force. Remember the old (retired) addage, "Democrats always want a smaller military to send everywhere, while Republicans always want a larger military to send nowhere,"?

And he concluded hypocracy of the Left when they rejected the effort to rid the world of a War Criminal meglomaniacal dictator, because the effort was spearheaded by a Right Wing Republican, W. Bush. So, I think it was the same conscious wrestling many centrists did when they heard John Kerry comparing his foreign policy to George Bush the First's (Realist) and the President comparing his foreign policy to John Kennedy's (Idealist). However, Hitchens concluded, as many Centrists have and will display next Tuesday, that in the totality of the circumstances, a little dose of Realism in foreign policy pales in comparison to the importance of repositioning every other policy back to the center where it belongs.

I'm glad to see Hitchens joining the ranks of the Rising Center.
Welcome.

I'm siding with carla on the Hitchens count - what, Chris, you fell into peer pressure?