The august New York Times has decided to give conservative William Kristol a column on the editorial page. Not a bad idea, you’d think. Kristol represents a fairly centrist big-government conservatism that ought to go down fairly well with the big-government liberals that read the Times.
But you’d be wrong. The NYT readers are beside themselves. Writes Harry Stein, author of How I Accidentally Joined the Right-wing Conspiracy, the reaction was
Sputtering fury. Vicious name-calling. Denunciations of the Times for this unspeakable act. Threats to cancel subscriptions and otherwise exact revenge.
Editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal was surprised.
Kristol “is a serious, respected conservative intellectual—and somehow that’s a bad thing. How intolerant is that?”
Er, yes. Intolerant. And liberals are experts on that. But maybe Rosenthal doesn’t really understand his readers. Not like we right-wingnuts understand ’em. Because, you see, we get to experience the incoming rounds from them, every day of our lives. Says accidental conservative Stein:
Can Rosenthal truly be so unaware of the character of his own core readership? Does he actually believe that they’re open to challenge, or even reasonable back-and-forth? Doesn’t he read his own paper’s letters page? “David Brooks can write the mildest column in the world,” Bernard Goldberg observes, “and the letters to the editor act like he’s Hitler.”
I know. It’s all too delicious for words.
But I blame Al Gore. It was he who stirred up the party faithful after the contested 2000 election and, characteristically, never really conceded the election. Democrats decided it wouldn’t hurt to keep their partisans in a frenzy.
In my judgement, this was a strategic error, one that prevents the Democrats from making sensible course corrections from their left-wing orthodoxy.
But first, they get to win in 2008. Then watch it all fall apart.
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