Video: UAE sheikh tortures grain dealer for shortchanging him
Hot Air » Top Picks — ... Torture opponents will see this as exactly the same thing as what we’re doing to KSM while torture proponents will see it as exponentially worse. Granted, we’re talking about a grain dealer, not the guy who planned 9/11; granted, we’re talking about beatings with a plank with a nail in it, not belly slaps; granted, we’re talking about suffering for its own sake, not to elicit information to prevent mass murder. But other than that, the similarities are eerie. Ross Douthat’s first column for the NYT laments the fact that Cheney didn’t run last year instead of McCain so that ...

What if Dick Cheney had been the GOP nominee for President in '08?
Althouse — He'd have lost, but wouldn't the loss have been better for the GOP? It's Ross Douthat's first NYT column: As a candidate, Cheney would have doubtless been as disciplined and ideologically consistent as McCain was feckless. In debates with Barack Obama, he would have been as cuttingly effective as he was in his encounters with Joe Lieberman and John Edwards in 2000 and 2004 respectively. And when he went down to a landslide loss, the conservative movement might – might! – have been jolted into the kind of rethinking that’s necessary if it hopes to regain ...

Wish-I'd-said-that Dep't
The Reality-Based Community — ... Ross Douthat, in his NYT debut, captures the essence of modern wingnuttery in nine sibilant-laden words: a conservatism of supply-side economics and stress positions Posted at ...

Morning News Round-up
Politics Daily — ... Dick Cheney for president! So writes Ross Duthat in his first regular column for the New York Times. If that doesn't get eyeballs, we don't know what will. ...

New NY Times Columnist Envisions a Cheney Candidacy
Politics Daily — Filed under: Republicans, Dick Cheney, 2008 President, Media, VotingRoss Douthat has made his debut as the house conservative at The New York Times, taking over for the much maligned William Kristol. Douthat's first column, which re-imagines the 2008 election, rings of Kristol in that it presents a ridiculous premise, but unlike Kristol, Douthat duly acknowledges as much. The title? "Cheney for President." In the column, Douthat posits what might have happened had a "true conservative" (read: war and supply-side economics) carried the Republican standard in ...

Well, this is one way to get people to read your column
Brilliant at Breakfast — When I saw the headline for the debut column of the New York Times new conservative columnist, Ross Douthat (I shall refrain from making the obvious joke, after all, the man can't help his last name), I was actually starting to miss William Kristol, who would have written a column called "Cheney for President" but he would have been serious. ...

Like so many writers, fauxcon Ross Dothat reduced to churning out p*rn to make a living...
five feet of fury. (global warming: the loch ness monster of weather.) — sigh... Except without the happy ending. Cuz he's a dummy. So stop reading about mid-way through.

Abbreviated Pundit Round-Up
Daily Kos — Your one stop pundit shop. Ross Douthat debuts in the New York Times with a torturous Dick Cheney fantasy. Bob Herbert on economic recovery: The employment issue is not being addressed with the level of urgency that is warranted. For all the talk of green jobs, there is no large-scale creative effort to turn this employment debacle around. There is no crash program on anything like the scale needed, for example, to rebuild the rotting infrastructure — a big-time potential source of jobs. The financial industry is seen as essential, but millions of American workers are not. ...

No More Mister Nice Blog — KNOW WHAT THE GOP NEEDED LAST YEAR? MORE CRAZY TALK! That's what Ross Douthat says in his first New York Times op-ed column, in which he argues that it would have been a good thing if Dick Cheney had been the Republican nominee in 2008: ...Imagine that he'd damned the poll numbers, broken his oft-repeated pledge that he had no presidential ambitions of his own, and shouldered his way into the race. Imagine that Republican primary voters, more favorably disposed than most Americans to Cheney and the administration he served, had rewarded him with the nomination. At the very least, a Cheney-Obama contest would ...

The Daily Grind
Weekly Standard Blog — Seriously, White House? "It's so stupid because they tell you about every fire drill, but they didn't tell us about this." But don't worry. Obama is reportedly "incensed." Oddly enough, the WSJ is the only paper giving this colossal blunder front-page treatment. Michael Scheuer: "Now, in a single week, President Obama has eliminated two-thirds of that successful-but-not-sufficient national defense troika because his personal ideology -- a fair gist of which is 'If the world likes us more we are more secure.'" "This is impossible. If all countries are 'exceptional,' then none are, and ...

Douthat makes NYTimes debut
News — ... Former Atlantic writer and often-BBR-linked-to blogger Ross Douthat made his debut in the New York Times on Tuesday, penning a column on the hypothetical scenario that Dick Cheney ran for president last year. This is precisely the sort of conservatism that's ascendant in today's much-reduced Republican Party, from the talk radio dials to the party's grassroots. And a Cheney-for-President campaign would have been an instructive test of its political viability. As a candidate, Cheney would have doubtless been as disciplined and ideologically consistent as McCain was feckless. ...

What if we nominated Cheney?
Stubborn Facts — Ross Douthatt imagines that Dick Cheney had been the GOP nominee in 2008. Here's the core of his case: At the very least, a Cheney-Obama contest would have clarified conservatism’s present political predicament. In the wake of two straight drubbings at the polls, much of the American right has comforted itself with the idea that conservatives lost the country primarily because the Bush-era Republican Party spent too much money on social programs. And John McCain’s defeat has been taken as the vindication of this premise. We tried running the ...

Your Morning Omnibus
Megan McArdle — Hobbits! Moronic photo-op How to make money without really trying Pontiac through the years Bold is not beautiful (necessarily) Ross Douthat's Times debut Was Helen Gurley Brown a feminist icon or a mercenary tramp?

More Disclosure
Neptunus Lex — Writing in the NYT, Ross Douthat proses an interesting hypothetical: What if, rather than sniping at the president from the sidelines in 2009, former  vice president Dick Cheney had run against him last fall? At the very least, a Cheney-Obama contest would have clarified conservatism’s present political predicament. In the wake of two straight drubbings at the polls, much of the American right has comforted itself with the idea that conservatives lost the country primarily because the Bush-era Republican Party spent too much money on social programs. And John McCain’s defeat has been taken as the vindication of this premise. ...

Cheney 4 Pres
Shakesville — Brand spanking New York Times conserva-columnist Ross Douthat is off to a rollicking start by observing: "Watching Dick Cheney defend the Bush administration's interrogation policies, it's been hard to escape the impression that both the Republican Party and the country would be better off today if Cheney, rather than John McCain, had been a candidate for president in 2008." ...

The Party Of Cheney
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan — Douthat's first column is up and it has provoked golf claps all around. The closer: ...

CHENEY FOR PRESIDENT: “Watching Dick Cheney defend the Bush administration’s interrogation polici…
Instapundit — CHENEY FOR PRESIDENT: “Watching Dick Cheney defend the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, it’s been hard to escape the impression that both the Republican Party and the country would be better off today if Cheney, rather than John McCain, had been a candidate for president in 2008.” ...

Greg Mitchell: New Conservative Times Columnist Debuts -- With "Cheney for President" Call
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com — ... For his very first column today argues that...Dick Cheney should have run for president in 2008. The column is actually titled, "Cheney for President." ...

The Cheney Phase
Matthew Yglesias — In his debut column, Ross Douthat laments that Dick Cheney didn’t throw his hat into the 2008 ring, because a Cheney candidacy would have left conservative reformers a stronger hand today: We tried running the maverick reformer, the argument goes, and look what it got us. What Americans want is real conservatism, not some crypto-liberal imitation. “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 ...

Wish Him Well
The Corner on National Review Online — [image] [image] NRO BLOG ROW | THE CORNER | ARCHIVES SEARCH E-MAIL PRINT RSS [image] [image] Tuesday, April 28, 2009 [image] Wish Him Well [ Mark Hemingway ] It's noted in the web-briefing, but Ross has his first column in the NYT today. 04/28 10:34 AM [image] Share [image] [image] [image] © National Review Online 2009. All Rights Reserved. Home | Search | NR / Digital | Donate | Media Kit | Contact Us

Brief Political Aside
Galley Slaves — Ross Douthat, the New York Times's new conservative columnist, has a piece up today doing a What If Dick Cheney had been the nominee in 2008. Douthat seems to think that if Cheney had run he would have lost in such a landslide that it might have jump-started conservatism on the road to intellectual recovery: ...

New Conservative NY Times Columnist, Wishes We Could Have Stuck A Fork In Conservatism After The Last Election
Ace of Spades HQ — ... Columnist, Wishes We Could Have Stuck A Fork In Conservatism After The Last Election Ross Duthat makes his debut on the Times' Op-ed page today and shockingly, the new 'conservative' member of the team immediately takes after...wait for it...conservatives. That mean, grumpy Dick Cheney to be precise. The hook of the column is that if Dick Cheney had run instead of John McCain, conservatives would have been defeated at the polls and realized it wasn't moderates that killed the party but Cheneyesque conservatism . At the very least, a Cheney-Obama contest would ...

Brainster's Blog — Ross Douthat's Debut I was pleased to see him get a column at the NY Times and this is a pretty good debut: Watching Dick Cheney defend the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, it’s been hard to escape the impression that both the Republican Party and the country would be better off today if Cheney, rather than John McCain, had been a candidate for president in 2008. Never mind Cheney's heart problems, never mind that the Republicans desperately needed to distance themselves from Bush in ...

John Wellington Ennis: Torture Finally Broke Them
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com — In the end, torture broke them. They could no longer hold it all back. They now realize that their denial does not add up, and their tormentors become convinced of their guilt. The Architects of Agony in the name of America are aware that their arrogant era has ended. They've been tortured enough by the questions about torture. Dick Cheney is suddenly more media accessible than Susan Boyle. The man who personified "undisclosed location" actually wants to release classified documents on coerced interrogations to prove they yielded some pertinent ...

Re: Wish him well
The Corner on National Review Online — ... ] Mark, I think the charitable view of that first Douthat column - " Cheney For President " - is that he's still finding his feet. However, if you want a genuine hot-for-Cheney column, these gay Hillary supporters are your ...

Arlen Specter Jumps The Fence To Save His Miserable Career
DownWithTyranny! — ... will not change. The Inside the Beltway Democratic Establishment was overjoyed-- as were hard core rightists in the GOP, like Limbaugh, who also suggested Collins, Snowe and McCain join him-- but aside from caucusing with the Democrats, this is probably better news for the Bayh anti-Obama Bloc than for actual Democrats who believe in the values and principles of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Over in crazyland, where their only regret is that Cheney wasn't their candidate last year instead of McCain, they're all excited about Toomey's ...

A Soothing Voice
Weekly Standard Blog — The New York Sun is back, or at least the editorial page is. The editors write in response to Ross Douthat's first column in the Times: “Cheney for President” is the headline today over the first column by the New York Times’s newest op-ed regular, Ross Douthat — a delightful debut suggesting that, as Mr. Douthat puts it, “both the Republican Party and the country would be better off today if Cheney, rather than John McCain, had been a candidate for president in 2008.” Well, the left laughed, along with a number of Republicans, when The New York Sun suggested exactly that — more than two years ...

If Cheney Had Run
The Corner on National Review Online — Tuesday, April 28, 2009 [image] If Cheney Had Run [Ramesh Ponnuru] Ross Douthat is right to suggest that McCain's loss wasn't particularly clarifying for Republicans. But I think he is wrong to say that nominating Cheney and losing would have caused the party to get over its illusions. A lot of conservatives would have taken his loss as a verdict on the Bush-Cheney administration's big spending and its support for an amnesty for illegal immigrants, wouldn't they? It's not as though Cheney as nominee could have walked away from either of those things. 04/28 04:02 PM [image] Share

Tuesday's Mini-Report
Political Animal — TUESDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits: * The virus spreads : "Two new swine flu cases were confirmed in Israel and as many as 11 in New Zealand, bringing the number of countries with confirmed cases to at least seven on Tuesday. But all, with the exception of Mexico, said the patients were recovering or had been hospitalized with only mild symptoms, leaving health officials struggling to determine why the disease has killed only in Mexico." * The CDC expects to see Americans die from the swine flu virus. The U.S. now has 64 confirmed cases across five states, with the most cases in New York, which has 45. * Pakistan ...

The GOP Purity Experiment
The Moderate Voice — ... cases they have picked off those moderates and have made the party more pure. These groups tend to be inward looking and wary of the outside world. For them, the reason the GOP last in 2006 and 2008 was because they were not pure enough. George Bush? He spent like a drunken sailor. John McCain? He was too feckless. No, there is no need to change and to expand the coalition, there is only the need to be more faithful and more pure and purge those who don’t agree. Ross Douthat, in his debut column for the New York Times, argues that maybe Dick Cheney ...

Cenk Uygur: Cheney in 2012?
Politics on HuffingtonPost.com — ... At first when I heard Ross Douthat, the new conservative op-ed writer at the New York Times, had suggested that the GOP should have run Dick Cheney as the presidential candidate in 2008, I thought he was another ridiculous right-winger. I thought he was seriously going to argue that Cheney would have won. But it turns out he had a different point, a great point. ...

The Upside of a GOP Blowout
The Moderate Voice — The blogosphere is chatting about former McCain and now former Huntsman advisor John Weaver’s fears of a 2012 GOP Blowout if the party’s guiding lights are Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney. There is a lot of talk that if the party doesn’t start appealing to moderates soon, 2012 is going to be bloody. That prospect used to bother me, but I’m beginning to wonder if that’s not a bad thing. Let me explain. As Ross Douthat explained a few weeks ago in his case that Dick Cheney should have ran in 2008, I am beginning to think that maybe we should let ...