20 most annoying conservatives!

[Jason McCullough]

Funny stuff.

http://www.pandagon.net/archives/00002229.htm

[Jim Preston]

I would put Ann Coulter at #1. But I would also put her at #2 - #20 as well.

Just out of curiosity, Jason, are there any conservative columnists you like? I read George Will regularly because he's one of the very, very, very few conservatives I've found who can disagree without strawmanning the left. He genuinely sees political debate as a sort of national conversation and not a means of shouting down the opposition a la idealogues such as Limbaugh and O'Reilly.

[Jason McCullough]

You must be reading different George Will columns than me. Well, on most days; he has this strange schitzophrenic thing going on, the same as David Brooks; perfectly reasonable and interesting for a week, then it's off to la la la (Brooks saying "People who have multiple sexual partners per year are committing spiritual suicide!") I think Will actually is doing the whole academic tweed thing so he can pretend he's interested in debate (the same guy who briefed Reagan with a stolen briefing book), but it doesn't always work out that way when he blows a gasket. Seems to be happening more often lately than in the 1980s - his stuff on the FL election was especially wierd. He's discovered this annoying penchant for recycling things that are flat false, too.

So maybe Will, definitely Daniel Drezner, Brooks, Postrel, Volokh; basically the libertarians. The social conservative columnists are where intellectual or moral arguments go to die. The crazy tax cutters (Stephen Moore, et. al) might as well be writing religious screeds for all they're interesting.

The one I specifically can't stand is Jonah Goldberg. He's got the whole faux-young & cool kids kinda-populism in the service of GOP shilling down to a science. Just about all of his columns are horrible.

Would probably have to agree with Coulter at #1-20.

[Woolen Horde]

Will had a good column yesterday blasting the Republican Congress for the shit they're pulling. Like extending the traditional 15-minute voting window to three fuckin' hours to strongarm votes on Medicare.

And he can't believe they're contemplating abolishing the Senate's status as a continuing body, which means that whichever party has control of the Senate can rewrite all the rules after every election. The Republicans want to do that now so they can abolish the filabuster and roll the Democrats. But they're behaving like the Democrats will never retake control of the Senate one day, and that payback for this shit is going to be, as they say, a bitch.

If the Republicans eliminate whatever power the minority party has, then they're just going to relegate themselves to hapless observers when the Democrats regain control.

And if you think partisan politics are bad now, imagine just how bad it would be under the new Republican scheme. At least, for now, there has to be some compromise. But if you eliminate the minority party's power, then whichever party in charge will just dictate what they want, and when the other side takes over, they'll undo it. It'll be like the abortion funding for third world clinics thing on virtually every issue. i.e. Every time a Republican takes the White House from a Democrat, the first thing he does is eliminate the funding. And every time a Democrat retakes the White House from a Republican, the first thing he does is reinstate the funding.

[Jason McCullough]

Yeah, but Will's outrage about rules and traditions is awfully selective, mostly relying on whether he thinks the change would get what he wants. He defended Hatch scrapping the blue-slip rule on nominations, for example.

[Daniel Morris]

Consistently outstanding conservative commentators:

--David Frum (the "right" in NPR's Left, Right, and Center)

--Fareed Zakaria

--Charles Krauthammer on foreign affairs (I disavow all his domestic policy writing)

[Troy S Goodfellow]

Is Fareed Zakaria a conservative? I never noticed.

I find Krauthammer insufferable myself, especially in his foreign policy stuff. For a columnist he seems to read very narrowly.

I used to like Frum, but ever since his stint in the White House, he seems to have lost a lot of his subtlety.

David Brooks is pretty good, and Paul Gigot has his moments as an editor/columnist. I think Novak is pretty solid in a lot of his print work, though his TV personality is pretty grating.

Troy

[Jason McCullough]

Ah, hadn't thought of those guys.

Frum: awful GOP shill, nearly as bad as Goldberg.
Krauthammer: Completely crazy.

Zakaria: Smart guy, makes sense. That book he produced was awful, though. Really pushing the boundaries on conservative, though. "Establishment" would probably be more accurate.

Gigot: See Frum.
Novak: See Gigot.

Driving in this morning I realized I was evaluating them on the grounds of "are they selling me blatant lies." Not coincidentally, this is why I loathe Goldberg.

Oh, and I actually think I've watched a Sunday morning political talk show.....well, never, come to think of it. So I don't pick up on the charming television thing, which I guess is good.

[Bub, Andrew]

Did anyone see the episode of This Week when Fareed corrected Will, which made him pause, goggle, and then stutter a bit? He did it so casually too. A few weeks later they went to a new format where the roundtable no longer debates each other. Sigh.

[Troy S Goodfellow]

Did anyone see the episode of This Week when Fareed corrected Will, which made him pause, goggle, and then stutter a bit? He did it so casually too. A few weeks later they went to a new format where the roundtable no longer debates each other. Sigh.

Yeah. That was cool. It was a pretty obvious error too, IIRC. I think Will's mouth just outran his brain, Zakaria called him on it and Skippy wasn't used to that. Considering Will usually has the facts at his fingertips, it was nice to see him slip up. Makes me feel better about my errors.

It's kind of too bad Will's influence has faded. Even if you disagree with his interpretation of events, he is intellectually honest and generally true to his principles no matter who is power. In today's media world of screaming cheerleaders for both sides, that's not in fashion.

Plus it's nice to see a guy on TV to spends less on his haircuts than I do.

Troy

[Bub, Andrew]

Fareed doing that was also refreshing to anyone who endured years of Sam Donaldson trying to argue with George Will... and getting plastered every time.

[Troy S Goodfellow]

Fareed doing that was also refreshing to anyone who endured years of Sam Donaldson trying to argue with George Will... and getting plastered every time.

And poor Cokie trying to get a word in edgewise...

Troy

[Toddy]

Krauthammer's stuff in Time is completely wacko. Every column the past few months devolves to some sort of idiotic "I hates furriners/We saved your asses in Dubya-Dubya Too" rant. The last piece on how the international sorrow for 9/11 was faked was unbelievable. I'm amazed that Time ran the piece. If I had a viable choice for an alternative news weekly other than (shudder) Newsweek or (double-shudder) Maclean's here in Canada, I'd have cancelled my Time subscription on the spot.

[Jason McCullough]

He's also diagnosed seemingly every prominent Democratic politican with a psychiatric disorder at some point or another. You see, he used to be a psychiatrist - it's not his fault all of his opponents are insane!

[theblackw0lf]

So what liberal journalists do our more conservative or republican forum users like? I know I like reading Gregg Easterbrook a lot.

[Anders Hallin]

I wish I could find more English articles of my favourite columnist (though technically he isn't really a columnist) that I disagree with, Per Ahlmark.
http://www.insightmag.com/news/312294.html

Read a comment that I can't remember if it was a joke or an anecdote half a year ago or so regarding him. He had apparently been invited to a Norwegian debate show, which made him ask why they didn't find someone in Norway instead to which he got the answer "Well.. there isn't really anyone in Norway who thinks like you".

FYI, there isn't anyone else in Sweden who does, either.

[Daniel Morris]

Consistently outstanding liberal commentators:

--Nicholas Kristof

--Molly Ivins

--Christopher Hitchens (though of course he doesn't count, since he supported military intervention in Iraq, and this, of course, is the real litmus test for "conservative/liberal" these days...)


(I guess I'll also give an honorable mention to Christopher Dickey, whose Cassandra complex is usually off-set by excellent reporting and some valuable insights.)

[Jason McCullough]

Hitchens is kind of like Sullivan - better described by the insane/not axis than left/right.

[mdowdle]

Mickey Kraus over at Slate is a very good conservative "columnist" (at least he's a very good conservative blogger). I'm a dyed-in-the-wool democrat (died-in-the-wool given today's political climate), and yet I find myself probably agreeing with Kraus more frequently then with the good liberal commentators listed above.

[XPav]

Kaus is conservative?

Errr, no. He's like Hitchens -- someone that's gotten irritated with the establishment left and while sharing liberal views on most everything, aims most of his fire at the Democrats.

He's much less annoying that Hitchens too. He didn't single handedly start the whole Orwell revolution.

[Jason McCullough]

Kaus is bizarre. It's really hard to believe that lazy, authoritarian-reflex, Clinton-obsessed hack over at Slate is the same guy that wrote The End of Equality.

[mdowdle]

Kaus is conservative?

Errr, no. He's like Hitchens -- someone that's gotten irritated with the establishment left and while sharing liberal views on most everything, aims most of his fire at the Democrats.

He's much less annoying that Hitchens too. He didn't single handedly start the whole Orwell revolution.

It is true that he is an independent thinker, which is why I as a liberal still enjoy reading him. But to say that he "shares liberal views on most everything" seems exaggerated. He certainly seems a fiscal conservative (at least insofar as he generally offers claims in support for Bush's domestic economic policy), and this by itself would seem to distinguish him from the standard "liberal views". I seem to recall (but cannot verify) that he even self-identifies himself as a conservative. He is largely sympathetic to Schwartzenegger and the Wall Street Journal, but merciless with regards to the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

Kaus is bizarre. It's really hard to believe that lazy, authoritarian-reflex, Clinton-obsessed hack over at Slate is the same guy that wrote The End of Equality.

I simply don't understand the claim that he is "Clinton-obsessed." Like most conservatives, he does pay more attention to Hilary Clinton then is warranted, but to say he is "obsessed" seems very extreme. It would be more accurate to call him "Krugman obsessed." The analysis he offers in his Slate blogs are articulate, well reasoned and generally well documented. He doesn't seem to make that many errors in his reporting. So I guess I don't get the claim that he is "lazy." It may be that he has an "authoritarian reflex." But he is occasionally critical of Republican authorities, and is clearly critical of Democrat authorities, so I don't quite see what particular authority he is reflexive toward.

[Jason McCullough]

I meant that he shares the far-right paranoia about the Clintons - Hillary has a secret plan to run in 2004! Clark is just a front man for the Clintons! Etc., etc. For example, this:

http://www.kausfiles.com/archive/index.07.13.99.html

In general, on the question of whether Hillary is at bottom a) an inflexible left-lib ideologue or b) a power-seeker who will coldbloodedly sell out the left when necessary, I lean to b).

WTF?

[Anders Hallin]

Well, Jason, she is a woman with quite a lot of power, after all.

[XPav]

Well, Jason, she is a woman with quite a lot of power, after all.

And she had all those people killed.

[bago]

Uhm, that Jonah Goldberg comic is... lame?

What it has to do with him other than the phrase "Cheese eating surrender monkeys" escapes me.

[Jason McCullough]

Uhm, that Jonah Goldberg comic is... lame?

What it has to do with him other than the phrase "Cheese eating surrender monkeys" escapes me.

You need to read more Jonah, then.