Ross Douthat at the New York Times

Ross Douthat comes out with his debut column for the Times with a breathtakingly provocative concept: that Dick Cheney should have been the Republican candidate for president last year, so that real conservatism could have been given it's trial by ordeal, and the G.O.P. could have gotten it out of its system if it got drubbed:

“Real conservatism,” in this narrative, means a particular strain of right-wingery: a conservatism of supply-side economics and stress positions, uninterested in social policy and dismissive of libertarian qualms about the national-security state. And Dick Cheney happens to be its diamond-hard distillation. The former vice-president kept his distance from the Bush administration’s attempts at domestic reform, and he had little time for the idealistic, religiously infused side of his boss’s policy agenda. He was for tax cuts at home and pre-emptive warfare overseas; anything else he seemed to disdain as sentimentalism.

If today's column is any indication, it looks like Douthat is at least going to be more sparky than Bill Kristol was.

Ross Douthat at the New York Times

Ross Douthat comes out with his debut column for the Times with a breathtakingly provocative concept: that Dick Cheney should have been the Republican candidate for president last year, so that real conservatism could have been given it's trial by ordeal, and the G.O.P. could have gotten it out of its system if it got drubbed:

“Real conservatism,” in this narrative, means a particular strain of right-wingery: a conservatism of supply-side economics and stress positions, uninterested in social policy and dismissive of libertarian qualms about the national-security state. And Dick Cheney happens to be its diamond-hard distillation. The former vice-president kept his distance from the Bush administration’s attempts at domestic reform, and he had little time for the idealistic, religiously infused side of his boss’s policy agenda. He was for tax cuts at home and pre-emptive warfare overseas; anything else he seemed to disdain as sentimentalism.

If today's column is any indication, it looks like Douthat is at least going to be more sparky than Bill Kristol was.