Conservatives! Need advice on conservatism? Read the New York Times.

They appear nowadays with the regularity of timed-release capsules: op-ed columns in America’s leading left-liberal newspaper informing conservatives what true conservatism is. The latest is by Ross Douthat, a senior editor at the center-left Atlantic. Douthat says he’s only criticizing the “purism” of the conservative opponents of John McCain. In reality, he’s telling conservatives to die.

An L-dotter agrees with my point:

Reply 17—Posted by: jglas, 2/10/2008 6:59:02 AM

A New York Times liberal preaching to conservatives that McCain is really the conservative and they’re looney tunes extremists, yeah that’s convincing.

Also this:

Reply 16—Posted by: Liberty7, 2/10/2008 6:57:40 AM

Dittos #8; When you see a line like: ‘Republican primary voters who turned to Mr. Limbaugh for their marching orders ..’, you know the writer doesn’t under Rush and his audience [or much of talk radio]. Rush does not give marching orders and most in the audience don’t want and wouldn’t follow such orders. And it should be noted that Rush didn’t endorse Romney until the very last moment after Rudy dropped out and was embracing McCain.

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Alex K. writes:

Douthat’s another annoying case like Dreher—he says he’s a “moderate restrictionist” on immigration and once cited Krikorian and Sailer (!) as his favorite writers on the subject. But, as with Dreher, I just end up thinking—what’s the point, man? Krikorian wrote that devastating piece about how McCain is a to-the-core multiculturalist and hates anyone who isn’t. Douthat ought to know that McCain isn’t just dragging his feet on toughening up the border, he’s an all-out open borders thug. Yet Douthat recently described McCain’s new position—seal the borders, then legalize—as his own, and the only question is, will McCain do it or not. Douthas has no conception that there’s more to the issue than this. And he manages to get through his entire NYT op-ed without mentioning immigration. No conception that you really aren’t a fiscal conservative if you’re going to open the nation’s welfare state to the world. “Moderate restrictionists” may technically sign off on Krikorian-style restrictionism, but for whatever reason, they don’t care that much or don’t want to look like they care that much. That pretty much describes National Review as well.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 10, 2008 04:32 PM | Send