Those Unsullied Conservatives

National Review's John Derbyshire got a kick out of the little prank Kerry's team apparently played on the New York Post, but opines that

back of the smile, there is the dull, sad realisation that our people could never be so clever and devious. I get the same feeling about the War on Terror. Not only does the Devil have all the best tunes, he has the best tricks, too.

See, the problem with us conservatives is, we're too nice. Just don't know how to think dirty.

Ri-ight. This from the party of Nixon, Gingrich, and Rove. This from the party of redistricting. From the party whose members placed posters in Baltimore, Maryland telling black voters to vote on the wrong day. The party which excludes former felons--now qualified voter--from the voting. Whose members campaign for Nader to get him on the ballot in states where he wouldn't otherwise have a prayer.

Also today, Derbyshire, a homophobe of some note, highlights the fact that VP candidates are usually prettier than Presidential candidates. It's nice to know he's got an eye for such things. Wonder if he's the first to corner the Pretty Veep fetish?

Fortunately, elsewhere on National Review's The Corner today, Jonah Goldberg raises the discourse by suggesting that John Edwards wouldn't be running as VP if he weren't pretty:

His stump schtick plays well with the populist forces in the Democratic Party and he's pretty (no serious person I know thinks Edward would have ever gotten into politics if he'd been burnt by acid as a teenager).

So all this raises two questions: What is it with these tight-righties and pretty VP candidates? And isn't it a shame that William F. Buckley, the one writer at the National Review with any claim towards an intellect, has recently retired as editor in chief?

Shortly after announcing his retirement, Buckley confessed:

If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would have been in, I would have opposed the war. ... With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein was not the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration a year ago.

Too bad the rest of that lot in the corner aren't capable of the same intellectual honesty.