Reaping the whirlwind

"Poor George Will. He's got a huge boehner in his boxers for Jon Huntsman, but he can't -- try and fantasize as he might -- see a path for his chosen love to the White House. The reason for Will's frustration is quite simple. His party, the once grand old one, has been hijacked by the petty young thing of profound unseriousness: a seething, tempestuous horde of geezers and bigots and thumpers and temperamental medievalists and Hayekian hayseeds who prefer to soar blissfully on the goofweed of ideological purity than swoon over a candidate's dignified record of accomplishment. ... Yet Will is only getting what he deserves. Other conservative public intellectuals have for two years belittled and warned against the GOP's turn toward tea-party mania -- one thinks of, most notably, Andrew Sullivan and David Brooks -- while Will has smugly tolerated and at times even stoked its injudicious rise. Welcome to your own future, George." (P.M. Carpenter, "George Will's payback")