Reacting to prominent conservative blogger Charles Johnson's
announcement that he would not follow the right wing off a cliff,
Andrew Sullivan is offering his own reasons for parting with the
movement.

Johnson, who blogs at Little Green Footballs, wrote on Monday that
fanatic politicians, racism, sexism, anti-Islamism, hate speech,
conspiracy theories and other troubling trends on the right wing have
led him to make a formal break.

"The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and
off the cliff," he concluded. "I won't be going over the cliff with
them."

Andrew Sullivan, though not as consistent a conservative as Johnson,
felt compelled to emphasize his own separation from the right wing.
Among other things, he writes:

I cannot support a movement that holds that purely religious doctrine
should govern civil political decisions and that uses the sacredness
of religious faith for the pursuit of worldly power.

I cannot support a movement that is deeply homophobic, cynically
deploys fear of homosexuals to win votes, and gives off such a racist
vibe that its share of the minority vote remains pitiful.

I cannot support a movement which has no real respect for the
institutions of government and is prepared to use any tactic and any
means to fight political warfare rather than conduct a political
conversation.