“But we’re not cynics here. Instead, we are devotees trying to track our way through Sullivan’s mental progression, disciples whose only hope lies in understanding how so great a man could so completely whipsaw from a critical view of a man he’d once supported to a sycophantic lay worshiper of another, equally obvious politician.

Some attribute this to President Obama’s pretty face. That’s demeaning. Some attribute it to George W. Bush’s stance on gay marriage – but that would be ridiculous, not merely because it would suggest that Sullivan is a one-dimensional writer obsessed with sex, but also because it would make Sullivan seem like an utter nutter for hating former Vice President Dick Cheney (a proponent of gay marriage and federalism) with the intensity of a thousand suns. (It would also raise questions about the man’s sanity in another way: Candidate Obama was clear that he opposed gay marriage, and occasionally likes to have a good laugh about angry, protesting gays. Yet Sullivan’s admiration continues.)

No. These are too prosaic, too common, too easy to destroy. What could drive a man from admiration and defense for a governor from Texas who hewed to Sullivan’s then-preferred doctrine of subsidiarity to calling him a war criminal? What could so completely rearrange a man’s entire view of the world – other, of course, than some terrible disease afflicting his mind?

The answer is obvious: The Jews.”