Bill Kristol Joins The New York Times
The New York Times` announcement that
Bill Kristol will become a weekly columnist has had
predictable reactions.
Establishment conservatives were thrilled. In
National Review Online, Mark Hemingway
called the decision "a gutsy, welcome editorial
move that will definitely get me to peruse the Grey Lady
more," while Stanley Kurtz
said "I can`t think of a better choice."
In contrast, the Left showed its usual undignified
outrage. Writing in the Huffington Post, Jane
Smiley
declared she will not only unsubscribe to the NYT,
she won`t even read their online newsfeed because, "Kristol
is not merely some rightwing loose cannon like David
Brooks or even
William Safire" but a "hatemonger." [Jane
Smiley: Muddle-Headed, Fear-Mongering, BushCo Shills
Still Have a Right to Shout "Fire" in a Crowded
Theater]
New York Times editor Andy Rosenthal told the
Politico that his left wing critics had a
"weird fear of opposing views," and that "The
whole point of the op-ed page is to air a variety of
opinions." [Times
defends hiring conservative Kristol, December
29, 2007]
Lost in this shadow boxing between the far Left, the
Respectable Right, and the Establishment Left is the
fact that Kristol isn`t a
real conservative and that Rosenthal`s support for
"opposing views" and a "variety of opinions"
is limited to his chosen opponents.
Take the issue of immigration. Just like
Bill Kristol,
David Brooks,
John Tierney, and
William Safire—the current and two previous token
conservative columnists at the Times—all support
some form of amnesty for illegal aliens. Having these
writers creates a façade of debate, while pushing out
serious conservative views off the table completely.
That being said, Kristol is much worse. Both
David Brooks and John Tierney have acknowledged that
there were very understandable reasons why Americans
were outraged over amnesty and mass immigration. John
Tierney even used the
semi-taboo field of evolutionary psychology to
explain why people are naturally averse to foreigners.
Throwing Hawks a Bone, May 16, 2006, also
here
(Indeed, Tierney`s mysteriously short tenure on the
op-ed page—he hasn`t appeared since
2006—was probably due to his occasional ventures
outside of liberal/neocon orthodoxy on matters like
sociobiology, a trip Kristol has never taken. Tierney
has even
quoted Steve Sailer, getting into
trouble even
when the
subject was golf).
Kristol, in contrast, professed to be perplexed by
why anyone would oppose illegal immigration. He
asked "What damage have they done that`s so great
in 20 years?" and even dismissed concerns about the
massive demonstrations with Mexican flags. He is
openly hostile to opponents of amnesty, whom he called
"yahoos" who will turn the GOP into an
"anti-immigration, Know Nothing party." [Y
is for Yahoo, April 10, 2006]
Kristol does not even attempt to call his stance
conservative. He
admitted to Chris Wallace that, "I`m a liberal on
immigration" and that "I am pro-immigration, and
I am even soft on illegal immigration."
[VDARE.COM NOTE: Kristol, like
the Editors of National Review,
came out against amnesty when it became plain that
amnesty was so unpopular that support for it would
destroy any foreign policy influence he had—see Peter
Brimelow`s blog
here.]
In 1992, Kristol fought to eliminate the pro-life
plank—which he
said was "anachronistic"—from the GOP
platform. When it comes to dismantling the Great
Society, let alone the New Deal, Kristol
told Washington Post columnist
E.J. Dionne that
"Franklin Roosevelt and
John Kennedy and, for that matter, Lyndon Johnson are
big facts in American history. Are we willing to say
that the country is worse off because of
FDR or
JFK or
LBJ? I`m not willing to say that." [The End
of an Era of Bashing Government, Washington Post, [Pay
archive] September 19, 1997]
And Bill Kristol stands with
the Left in denouncing the Southern strategy that made
the GOP the majority party in the country. During the
Trent Lott mess that
he helped create, he
gloated that Lott`s removal meant that they were
clearing out the "last of the products" of the
Southern strategy who, according to him, "have a
somewhat compromised image to the country as a whole."
[Divisive
Words: The Consequences; A Nixon-Era Distraction Steps
Out Of Limelight, By Todd S. Purdum, New York
Times, December 21, 2002 ]
Even on the issue of foreign policy—which is what is
currently outraging the Left—Kristol not too far off the
reservation. In 2004, he
told The New York Times that he`d take,
[John] Kerry over [Pat] Buchanan or any of the lesser
Buchananites on the right. If you read the last few
issues of The Weekly Standard, it has as much or
more in common with the liberal hawks than with
traditional conservatives. [Lack
of Resolution in Iraq Finds Conservatives Divided,
by David D. Kirkpatrick, April 19, 2004:]
Sure enough, the NYT`s
Andy Rosenthal said, "We have views on our
op-ed page that are as hawkish or more so than Bill."
Yet to the loud Left, Kristol is still unacceptable.
Nation columnist Katha Pollitt
complained that if the New York Times really
wanted to have balance, "Let`s have a true leftist on
the op-ed page–someone as far to the left as Kristol is
to the right. Noam Chomsky,
anyone?"
In the lead up to the war in Iraq, the Left
discovered
neoconservatives, and the many of the Old Right
welcomed the attacks on their
bête noire. But what ended up happening is the
neocons went from being thought of as
"Scoop Jackson liberals"
who had moved slightly to the Right (and into
the GOP) to being thought of as right wing extremists.
Nowhere in this equation were
authentic conservative voices factored in.
In effect, the whole political spectrum has moved to
the Left. If
Bill Kristol is now a "hatemonger" and the
right wing equivalent to Noam Chomsky, you can only
imagine what a
real conservative like
Pat Buchanan is.
One thing`s for sure: he`s not a columnist for the
New York Times.
Marcus Epstein
[send
him mail] is the founder
of the Robert A Taft
Club and the executive director of the
The American
Cause and
Team America PAC. A selection of his articles can be seen
here. The
views he expresses are his own.


