'Why I left the right'

Trailblazing conservative blogger Charles Johnson is disavowing the right, accusing conservatives of supporting bigotry and "anti-government lunacy." Johnson, on his popular Little Green Footballs blog, said he's parting company with "the American right wing" because it "has gone off the rails." Does he have a point, or is he the one who's losing it? (Watch White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett call the GOP "extreme")

The right really has gone off the deep end: This is a "striking" development, says Steve Benen in Washington Monthly, given the leading role Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs has played in the anti-Islamist, neoconservative blogosphere. It would be terrific if his announcement encouraged more conservatives to "come to their senses" and stop being so hateful—but that's not likely judging from the angry response from Johnson's old pals.

"Charles Johnson gives up on the right"

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Johnson is the one who "flipped out": The irony of Charles Johnson's screed against the allegedly "crazy hateful bigoted" right, says Boston Herald editor Jules Crittenden in his blog, is that it makes him sound "crazy and hateful." He seems merely mad at conservatives who disagree with him. His explanation for his change of heart is thin, especially since he never says why he thinks liberals are the "sane, loving, rational" ones.

"Charles Johnson explains the crazy hating"

The right left Johnson, not vice versa: As someone with a deep attachment to the American conservative tradition, says Andrew Sullivan in The Atlantic, I think Charles Johnson is "absolutely right" to "get off that wagon." People who have abandoned the cause of limited government and embraced "torture as a core value" don't deserve to be called conservatives. To paraphrase Reagan: We didn't leave the right, the right left us.

"Leaving the right"

This is what happens in a polarized nation: These "party-left-me laments" are just an entertaining sideshow in our "with-us-or-against-us" political world, says Matt Welch in Reason. All this "throwing dog poop on shoes" is harmless enough. But "here's hoping Johnson and Sullivan also point their considerable energies and withering skepticism at the people who actually run the country."

"Charles Johnson bashes the right's warblogging idiotarians with a Little Green Moonbat"