Buckley: Hands Off Dad's Torch, Rush

Christopher Buckley, having been savaged by Rush Limbaugh for endorsing Barack Obama, fires back at the talk-show host for daring to think he can assume the conservative mantle of his father, the late William F. Buckley Jr. Writing in the Daily Beast, Buckley brandishes French, that tool of the “card-carrying member of the Eastern seaboard, proletarian-despising media elite” in pronouncing Limbaugh “de trop”—"a bit much."

Limbaugh mocked Buckley for choosing Obama (“we elites have always inclined toward the black candidate who grew up with a single mother on food stamps,” Buckley concurs) because he “has to have a good mind,” calling Buckley a “pseudo-intellectual,” and distorting one of his quotes beyond recognition. This rejection of reason stuns Buckley. “Rush, I knew William F. Buckley Jr.,” he writes. “Rush, you’re no William F. Buckley, Jr.” (More Rush Limbaugh stories.)