Ross Douthat: Another Clueless "Conservative" NY Times Opnion Writer

Ross Douthat (whose name sounds perilously close to a combination of "douchebag" and "asshat") is the New York Times' latest I'm-a-conservative-but-not-in-the-way-you-think blogger Op-Ed columnist. Now that David Brooks is basically an Obama Democrat, off in the political woods writing about The Concept of Genius and How Society Works, I guess they felt they needed to bring on someone to actually talk like a Republican, sort of.

It's always puzzled me that the Times feels the need to pay lip service to Republican politics, as if doing so will dispel the almost universal (and accurate) perception that it is a liberal paper. The problem is that mainstream conservative voices now are so far off the conspiracy theory deep end that the Times has to resort to oddballs like Douthat who still have a little Republican fire and brimstone, but ultimately are too smart to actually endorse most of the right's crazy ideas wholesale.

Today Douthat makes the party-line argument that Sen. Arlen Spector (R D-Pennsylvania) is such a morally bankrupt political opportunist that the Republicans didn't need him anyway. He also dismisses as "Yankee moderates" Republican Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Guess they don't need those traitors either. No problem, Ross, us Democrats are more than comfortable caucasing with all of the Northeast Republicans. Hand 'em over!

He then makes a vague argument for a new kind of Republican, sort of like what Bill Clinton and Gary Hart were to the Dems of yore, but he admits that none of those exist right now. Anywhere. God am I glad I'm not a Republican right now.

Meanwhile Brooks is over on the other side of the page saying that today's Republican Party has no appeal to young people, urban people, or the upper or lower middle classes. This sounds like more than just a lack of a Bizzaro World Gary Hart.