Photograph by Saul Loeb-Pool/Getty

This year, with the Mets games being broadcast on WOR 710, the radio station has become one of the presets on my car stereo. To be honest, it’s a mixed blessing. In addition to listening to David Wright and Curtis Granderson strike out, I sometimes catch a bit of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, whose daily shows the station broadcasts.

Yesterday, as I was driving along the Belt Parkway, I heard Limbaugh say that President Obama had sounded like Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan when he spoke to the nation about the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (a.k.a. ISIS, or ISIL) on Wednesday night. I almost crashed the car. Limbaugh also had plenty of negative things to say. He claimed that the speech was an effort by the President to revive his lowly poll ratings, and he trashed Obama for saying that “ISIL is not Islamic.” But, several times, he hailed the firm tone of the President’s speech, noting that he hadn’t once come close to apologizing for the United States. (One of Limbaugh’s regular rants accuses Obama of being a serial apologizer for American actions.)

Limbaugh wasn’t the only conservative commentator whom Obama impressed. In the New York Post, John Podhoretz, a former Reagan speechwriter, wrote: “President Obama gave a self-consciously strong speech last night—so much so that it didn’t sound like him at all.” Charles Krauthammer, seen by many as the dean of conservative commentators, also had some kind words. Writing in the Washington Post, he began his column thus: “In his Islamic State speech, President Obama said many of the right things. Most importantly, he finally got the mission right: degrade and destroy the enemy.”

Larry Kudlow, another former Reagan Administration official, who now hosts a show on CNBC, where he promotes right-wing economics and U.S. jingoism, also praised Obama. “I know he’s made a million mistakes,” Kudlow wrote in National Review Online. “And I have opposed nearly all his domestic and international policies. But after watching Obama’s intense ISIS speech Wednesday night, and reading the text several times, I think the president basically—finally—got it right.”

Limbaugh, Podhoretz, Krauthammer, and Kudlow. That’s quite a law firm to have defending you. Like Limbaugh, the other three had some criticisms of the President to impart—of course they did. Obama’s “irresolution and fecklessness” have done great harm to his standing (Podhoretz); he underestimated the task of destroying ISIS (Krauthammer); he took a long time to figure this stuff out (Kudlow). But, by the standards of the right, where the President is routinely described as a proto-socialist, quasi-pacifist wimp, these reactions—and there were more like them—amounted to a rare outbreak of pro-Obama heresy.

The explanation isn’t hard to find. In announcing an escalation of military action in distant lands, the President was doing something that conservative commentators and other Republicans generally support. But it wasn’t just the substance of Obama’s remarks that appealed to the right: it was the manner and language in which he delivered them. As Podhoretz noted, “the poetry last night was muscular, forthright, plain and tough—deliberately and painstakingly so.’’ If the Democrats are the “Daddy party” and the Republicans are the “Mommy party,” the columnist went on, “this was the most Republican speech Barack Obama has ever given.”

Will this unexpected rapprochement between the President and conservatives last?

Probably not, but that depends on how the military campaign against ISIS unfolds. If a vote takes place in Congress—and, at this stage, it’s unclear whether that will happen—most G.O.P. members will likely express support for unleashing the U.S. military on the jihadis. (Opposing the President “would be a huge mistake,” Kudlow warned.) The pressure from the right will be aimed at expanding Obama’s war, not stopping it. More bombing; more U.S. service members involved; more everything. That will be the line.

It’s already being laid down, in fact. “Air strikes alone will not accomplish what we’re trying to accomplish,” House Speaker John Boehner said on Thursday. “Somebody’s boots have to be on the ground.” Some of Boehner’s foot soldiers went further—quite a bit further. “This is a stalemate strategy,” said John Fleming, a Louisiana congressman who serves on the House Armed Services Committee. “I think that we would want to see an all-out war, shock and awe. We put troops on the ground, we put all of our assets there after properly prepping the battlefield, and in a matter of a few weeks we take these guys out.”