A New Voice

Around the end of last year, Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, stepped away from his weekly column at the New York Times, and with him went the one reliably conservative voice at America's self-proclaimed newspaper of record.

Ross Douhat has replaced Kristol as the Times' token. His second column in the job appeared today, and it's a good one.

Douhat is conservative. He's young. And, unlike some of the older set of conservative writers who are content to mainly complain about the way it used to be, he's very energetic in his creativity and thinking about expanding the ranks of conservatism. Considering, it's a wonder the Times lets him subscribe to the paper, let alone write for it.

A nugget from today:

Political debates are often framed in binaries: Middle-of-the-roaders versus hard-liners, moderates versus ideologues. But American politics is more complicated than that. There are multiple rights and lefts, and multiple middles as well. So-called extremists can serve the country well. And self-conscious moderates can be intellectually bankrupt.

Specter himself is an almost too-perfect example of this point. The Republican Party will miss the Pennsylvania senator’s vote, but it’s hard to imagine anyone taking inspiration from such a consummately unprincipled figure.

His columns appear on Tuesdays.